Interior of the Church of San Zacca: 



ria 



VENICE 



ITS HISTORY — ART — INDUSTRIES 
AND MODERN LIFE 



BY 

CHARLES YRIARTE 



TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH 



BY F, J. SITWELL 



ILLUSTRATED 



PHILADELPHIA 

HENRY T. COATES & CO. 

PUBLISHERS 



TO 

SIR RICHARD WALLACE, 

BART., M. P., 

THIS WORK 
IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED BY 

THE AUTHOR. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

Page 
Origin — Development — Fall of the Republic .... 11 



CHAPTER II. 

The Archives of Venice in the Monastery of Santa 
Maria Gloriosa dei Frari 55 

CHAPTER HI. 
The Commerce of the Venetians — Their Navigation . 70 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Arsenal of Venice 95 

CHAPTER V. 
The Doge of Venice 107 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Art OF Medal Engraving .123 

CHAPTER VII. 
Architecture — Its Successive Transformations . . . .126 

CHAPTER Vin. 
Architecture— The Renaissance Period 150 

11 ; 5 



6 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IX. 

Page 

ThePvIALto 164 

CHAPTER X. 

Venetian Sculpture — Sepulchral Monuments — 

Bronzes 170 

CHAPTER XL 

The Lombardi Family — Pietro Lombardo 386 

CHAPTER XXL 
Alessandro Vittoria and Alessandro Leopardi . . . 204 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Painting— Origin and Rise of the Venetian School — 

Titian 283 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Painting ( Continued) — Tintoretto — Veronese — The 

Artists of the Decadence 257 



CHAPTER XV. 
Printing — The Literary Movement 292 

CHAPTER XVI. 
Glass and Mosaics 324 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Lace — Costume 351 



CONTENTS. 7 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

Page 
The Approach to the City— The Grand Canal . . . 376 

CHAPTER XIX. 

St. Mark's Place — The Carnival — Types of the 

People 391 



CHAPTER XX. 

Churches — The Lido— The Isle San Lazzaro — The 

Armenians — Conclusion 414 



INDEX 439 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Photogravures by A. W. Elson & Co., Boston. 



PAGE 

Interior of the Church of San Zaccaria. . Frontispiece. 

The Bridge of Sighs 16 

The Ducal Palace 30 

Chamber of the Council of Ten — Ducal Palace . . 48 

Church of Santa Maria de' Frari 62 

Panorama of Venice from the Campanile 76 

Correr Museum — Ancient Fondaco dei Turchi ... 90 

Senate Chamber — Ducal Palace 108 

Basilica of St. Mark^s , 122 

Ducal Palace — Upper Part of the Porta della 

Carta 138 

Grand Canal — Palace Vendramin-Calergi ..... 154 

Bridge of the Rialto and the Grand Canal . . . 168 

Monument of Jacopo Marcello 180 

Interior of the Basilica of St. Mark's 196 

Giants' Staircase— Ducal Palace 210 

Monument of General Bartolomeo Colleoni .... 22G 

Main Entrance of the Basilica of St. Mark's . . . 238 

Great Council Room— Ducal Palace 250 

Church of San Giovanni e Paolo 2G6 

Detail from Basilica of St. Mark's 280 

9 



10 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE 

Group of the Four Emperors — Basilica of St. 

Mark's 294 

Bronze Gates of the Campanile 318 

Fountain in the Court of the Ducal Palace . . . 332 
Interior of the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore 354 
Grand Canal — Church of San Geremia and En- 
trance TO THE Canareggio o . . 370 

PlAZZETTA OF St. MaRK, WITH A YiEW OF THE ISLAND 

OF San Giorgio . . 388 

Grand Canal, with Cavalli Palace and Church 

DELLA Salute 402 

Monument of Canova in the Church de' Frari . . 416 



VENICE. 



CHAPTER I. 

OKIGIN— DEVELOPMENT— FALL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

Venice, the Queen of the Adriatic, is distin- 
guished, not only by the glory of her arts, the 
strangeness of her position, the romance of her 
origin, but by the great historical memories of her 
days of power These throw an interest over a city 
which survives its own glories, and even its own 
life, like the scenery in some great theatre after 
the play is done and all the actors are withdrawn. 
A pleasurable melancholy grows upon the traveller 
who wanders among the churches or glides along on 
the canals of Venice. Although misfortune has over- 
cast the city with a pall of sadness, it still preserves 
the indefinable grace of things Italian. Its old 
magnificence imposes on the mind, while the charm 
of its present melancholy creeps about the heart. 
And even on the brightest day, when the uncon- 
querable sun looks down most broadly on the glitter- 
ing city of St. Mark, silence and melancholy still 
hold their court on the canals ; and the most unsen- 
timental spirit yields to the elegiac influence. 

11 



12 VENICE. 

At Venice^ he who is happy, he for whom silence 
has no charms and who loves the tumult of the 
world, soon finds his footsteps dogged by limping 
dulness. But those who have known the sorrows 
of life return gladly thither ; the place is '' catch- 
ing" — every corner or open square recommends 
itself to the affections. The lightness of the heavens, 
the even purity of the air, the steely shine of the 
lagoon, the roseate reflections of the walls, the nights 
as clear as day, the softness of the Venetian dialect, 
the trustfulness and placability of the people, their 
tolerance for all men's humors, and their gentle 
intercourse, — out of all these results that unseizable 
and seductive quality which is indeed Venice, which 
sings at a man's heart, and so possesses and subdues 
him that he shall feel far from home whenever he is 
far from the Piazzetta. 

Travel where you will^ neither Rome nor Jeru- 
salem, neither Granada, Toledo, nor the Golden 
Horn will offer you the spectacle of such another 
enchanted approach. It is a dream that has taken 
shape ; a vision of fairyland turned into reality by 
human hands. The order of nature is suspended ; 
the lagoon is like the heavens, the heavens are like 
the sea ; these rosy islets carrying temples are like 
barks sailing in the sky ; and away upon the horizon, 
towards Malamocco, the clouds and the green islands 
lie mingled as bafflingly as shapes in the mirage of 
the desert. The very buildings have an air of dream- 



HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC. 13 

land ; solids hang suspended over voids ; and pon- 
derous halls and palaces stand paradoxically sup- 
ported on the stone lace-work of mediaeval sculptors. 
All the principles of art are violated : and out of 
their violation springs a new art^ borrowed from the 
East but stamped with the mark of Venice ; in a 
while this is transformed and becomes, in the hands 
of the Lombardij the Leopardi, and the Sansovino, 
the glory and the adornment of the city. Opulent 
and untamed imaginations have spoiled the treasury 
of the Magnificoes to build these sculptured palaces 
and basilicas of marble and mosaic, to lay their 
pavements with precious stones and cover their walls 
with gold and onyx and oriental alabaster. They 
used the pillage of Aquileia, Altinum, Damascus, 
and Heliopolis. With a nameless daring they raised 
high in air, over their porches and among their 
domes, the huge antique bronze horses of Byzantium. 
They reared a mighty palace upon pillars whose 
carvings seem wrought by workmen in some opiate 
dream that made them reckless of the cost of time. 
They dammed back the sea to build their city in 
its place. In the lagoon, to the sound of strange 
workmen's choruses, they buried all the oaks of 
Istria and Dalmatia, of Albania and the Julian Alps. 
They transformed the climate of the Illyrian penin- 
sula, leaving plains instead of mountains, and sun- 
burnt deserts in the place of green and grateful 
forests ; for all the hills have become palaces, as at 



14 VENICE. 

the touch of a wand ; and deep in the salt sea the 
old oaks stand imbedded, supporting the city of St. 
Mark. 

They were a people of fugitives, forty thousand 
strong, driven from their homes by the barbarians 
in the fifth century. They took refuge in the la- 
goon, and there, on that shifting soil, in a salt marsh 
where they had neither ground to till nor stone to 
cut, nor iron to forge, nor Avood to shelter, nor 
even water that could be drunk, — ^-they founded the 
port of the Rialto. They made their own soil, con- 
trived to found a state without territory, and after 
a few brief trials and some scenes of blood, from 
which no people at its beginning can escape, struck 
out that form of government — the aristocratic re- 
public — which they maintained for fourteen cen- 
turies. Faithful to this form, they astonished the 
world by their sagacity, power, and stability, and 
by their genius for commerce, exchange, and in- 
dustry. At their origin they lived by the fruits of 
the sea as fishermen, and from the salt which nature 
deposited on the coast. This was their first article 
of exchange. By degrees they constructed flat- 
bottomed boats, then galleys, and at last fleets, and 
entering Byzantium as conquerors, overthrew the 
Eastern Empire. The whole Adriatic was their 
domain ; they laid claim to its sovereignty by right 
of a word spoken by Alexander III., when, pursued 
by Barbarossa^ he took refuge in their territory ; 



HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC. 15 

they symbolized that authority by the espousals of 
the Doge with the Sea^ and the legend of the gold 
ring brought back to the sovereign by the fisherman ; 
and from that time they held the whole coast from 
Ravenna to Albania. Kings had to ask leave of 
the Senate to ply in their waters when they wished 
to land on the shore of Illyria. They treated with 
all the sovereigns of Europe as equals^ constituted 
themselves the purveyors of the world, and on their 
commercial wealth laid the foundation of their 
political power. 

Twice the arbiters of the world vowed the de- 
strucrion of Venice, and leagued themselves together 
against her ; but her people, by dint of suppleness 
and agility, by turns firm and wily, baffled all com- 
binations, and came safely out of the most appalling 
dilemmas. At one moment all nations were in a 
manner tributary to them, because they were the 
greatest merchants, the bravest sailors, the most 
skilful builders, and the richest ship-owners in the 
world. When France, already beginning to move 
the world, had raised the cry of ^^ Dieu le veult," 
she had to beg of the Venetians a passage on board 
their ships to transport her army to the Holy Land ; 
they, being a practical people, demanded payment 
for this service in blood, since the gold whercAvith to 
pay was lacking ; so that the French went to the 
assault of Lara, and retook for the Venetians the 
Dalmatian colonies, which had shaken off their yoke. 



16 VENICE. 

The oldest, perhaps, of modern nations, the Vene- 
tians outstripped all others in the arts of civiliza- 
tion. Before the tenth century they had built on 
their group of islands no less than seventy churches, 
some of which, like those of Torcello, were miracles 
of art. They were the first to have the sense of 
luxury, to appreciate the refinements of life, the 
first to delight in sumptuous houses and fabrics, in 
the splendor of gems and the sheen of pearls. 
While Europe was yet plunged in the darkness of 
the Middle Ages, the Venetians went to the only 
two civilized people of our hemisphere, the Arabs 
and the Greeks, to borrow from them the elements 
of their delicate and exquisite arts. 

The more familiar we grow with the history of 
Venice, the more we come to marvel at the practical 
common sense of this handful of human beings, who, 
by the fourteenth or fifteenth century, were mak- 
ing more noise in the world, and filling a greater 
place, than the populations of the largest empires. 
As early as the fifth century we find them in posses- 
sion of a government, in the shaj)e of Consuls sent 
from Padua to administer the islets of the Eialto. 
In the seventh century they begin to feel their way 
toward a new form of government, and nominate a 
Doge, Paul of Heraclea. In 737 they appoint as 
heads of the State certain yearly magistrates, called 
^^ masters of the militia;" but, five years later, find- 
ing that the constant transfer of power gives in- 



The Bridge of Sighs 



HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC. 17 

stability to their society, they revive the office of 
Doge. No doubt the conditions of power will yet 
need modification. The future will not be free from 
struggles ; new institutions will come to complete 
the system, but from 742 to 1797 there will be no 
essential change in the mode of government: the 
State has found its formula. Whilst all the nations 
of Europe are constituting themselves into mon- 
archiesj and progressing along the same lines to 
unity, with more or less rapidity and success, the 
Venetians, on their part, shape their State into a 
Republic, make its chief, the Doge, the most con- 
stitutional of sovereigns, a living emblem of the 
Republic, intended only to represent her before am- 
bassadors, at public ceremonials, and on the occasion 
of royal visits, but without any real power, and act- 
ing only under constant and permanent control. At 
first the Republic is democratic, or, at least, grants 
certain rights to the people, but it soon becomes 
aristocratic, and remains so till its fall. 

Isolated as the Venetians were in their islands, 
jealous of their power, suspicious, and ever on the 
watch against conspiracies from without, how was it 
that they advanced so rapidly to civilization ? By 
their unrivalled genius for navigation and commerce. 
When they first landed in the East their object was 
certainly not to seek for a spark of the sacred fire 
of the arts, of industry, science, and the humanities, 
on the only hearth where that fire still burned. But 



18 VENICE. 

a gifted people does not come in contact with civili- 
zation for nothing ; and though its views are first 
bent with natural self-interest on the material advan- 
tages which such attainments may procure, the 
higher moral consequences soon follow. The dis- 
cerning spirit of such a people tries to appropriate 
methods, and transforms them by its own personal 
tastes and tendencies : the seed germinates, the 
shoot grows, the buds form themselves, the birth of 
Art is at hand. 

The first advantage the Venetians derived from 
their long sojourn in the East with the French, was 
the horror they conceived for the idle discussions, 
the religious controversies, and the vain subtleties of 
the Lower Empire, which had brought Byzantium to 
decay. Never after the tenth century was there 
civil war in the territory of the Republic, not even 
at that moment when, as if seized by some terrible 
infatuation, the towns of Lombardy rushed in arms 
against each other, and the sons of the same sacred 
Italy tore the breast of their mother. In establish- 
ing themselves in the East, where they founded 
houses of business, the Venetians learned Greek, and 
one of them, Jacopo, became the first translator of 
Aristotle. Constantinople being put to fire and 
sword, the men of science and letters Avere to be seen 
emigrating thence, carrying their ancient manu- 
scripts with them. Florence became the Athens of 
Italy, and Venice followed the movement. Thanks 



HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC. 19 

to GruarinOj one of her Veronese subjects, she early 
came to the knowledge of Xenophon^ Pindar, Strabo, 
Lucian, Arrian, Procopius, Diodorus Siculus^ and 
Plato. The Venetians had long ago borrowed and 
adapted their architecture from the East. The 
manufacture of glass came to them from the Arabs, 
whose rich fabrics they also imitated. The indus- 
trious people of Lucca^ driven into exile by the 
strife of Guelf and Ghibeline, brought their silk 
looms to the city of the lagoons ; as, later on, the 
sack of Rome by Bourbon drove many of the exiled 
artists to the same shores. Wealth abounded — it 
was the dawn of great days for the Italian spirit 
throughout the whole Peninsula — and the sacred fire 
ran through all the veins of that great intellectual 
body. 

The Venetians were in due time seized with a 
passion for literature and philosophy. Barbaro 
devoted himself to Aristotle, Romulus Amaseus to 
Xenophon and Pausanias^ Donate to Xenophon, 
Jerome Ramnusius translated the Arab Avicenna, 
and Malherbe, a monk of the Camaldolese order, 
made the first Italian translation of the Bible. 
Padua was soon to become the great centre of light. 
As early as the twelfth century this town had its 
university ; later, after its conquest by Venice, the 
policy of strengthening and continuing this learned 
tradition was steadily kept in view, in order to 
establish a privilege in favor of the institution. 



20 VENICE. 

The Republic forbade any of its subjects to follow 
their academic studies abroad^ and recognized de- 
grees conferred only by this particular university. To 
render such a decree of the Senate advantageous to 
the Venetians it was necessary to raise the standard 
of instruction to the same level as in the most dis- 
tinguished intellectual centres of Europe. The 
Senate shrank from nothings and men like Vesalius, 
GalileOj and Scaliger were to be seen in the chairs 
of Padua. Almost at the same moment a university 
was founded in Venice itself. By a happy concur- 
rence of events, in the very midst of the fifteenth 
century, at the close of an iron age, an age of deadly 
struggles and internal dissensions, of which the only 
result had been robbery and rapine, the sacking and 
burning of towns, and unchaining of the lowest pas- 
sions — at this very time, men bearing the proudest 
names in Venice, the Bragadino, the Foscarini, the 
Cornaro, the Giustiniani, the Trevisani, the Mo- 
cenigo, devoted themselves as instructors of youth, 
and filled the chairs of literature, grammar, the 
natural sciences, and mathematics. 

We shall show, in a separate division of our study, 
what development the art of naval construction, an 
art so vital to this population, had taken at Venice. 
Architecture had already found its formula, and 
combining Gothic with Oriental elements, had 
arrived at that unity of style so peculiar to Venice, 
of which Calendario and the architects of the 



HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC. 21 

Ducal Palace were the first masters. In painting 
they remained for a long while under first Oriental 
and then Florentine influences ; but by and by we 
shall find them^ in that harmonious concert of the 
Italian schools, striking their own independent note 
with CarpacciOj the Bellini, and Giorgione. Elo- 
quence was held in high honor. How could it be 
otherwise among the people who had first created a 
true government by parliament, where business was 
transacted in the Grand Council, and before the 
Senate ; where to carry his point the speaker must 
address himself straight to the understanding, and 
prevail by the clearness, charm, or splendor of his 
language and the force of his logic. 

Their prudent and sagacious diplomacy amazed 
men by the accuracy of its intelligence and the 
depth of its combinations. None of the nobles in 
the assemblies could be in ignorance as to State 
affairs, since they were thus conducted in the broad 
light of debate. A special body of Secretaries, un- 
rivalled for political knowledge, and for unpretend- 
ing and disinterested industry, prepared and eluci- 
dated obscure questions, and traced to their source 
the conflicts and incidents which occurred to arrest 
the progress of affairs. An ambassador could re- 
main for a given time only at the same court, lest he 
should allow himself to be inveigled or influenced 
by the charm of personal ties, or by the generosity 
of statesmen or of the sovereign. A solemn day 



22 VENICE. 

was appointed on his return, when he appeared 
before the whole assembled Senate to make his state- 
ment {relatione), to give an accomit of his labors, 
and to define precisely the relations existing between 
the Republic and the power to which he had been 
accredited by the sufi'rages of his fellow-citizens ; to 
point out the dangers which might occasion conflicts, 
and to indicate the means of lessening or averting 
them. Thereupon the Senators, according to the 
measure of his capacities and political talent, either 
promoted him in due course to the highest offices 
of the State, if they were struck by the sagacity of 
his exposition, or, in the contrary case, simply re- 
stored him to his place in the Councils, so prevent- 
ing future injury to the Republic through his lack 
of discernment. 

The constitution is a masterpiece. The machinery, 
with its fundamental system of mutual control, works 
with perfect regularity. All public offices being 
elective, there is always a presumption that the 
choice will fall upon the worthiest. That there is 
opportunity for intrigue, who can deny, since man is 
human ? but at any rate, all that the law-maker can 
do has been done to weaken and neutralize the 
influences of the BrogliOj that corner of St. Mark's 
Place where the patrician members of the College, 
senators, and members of the Grand Council prom- 
enade before the sittings, and arrange among 
themselves, not without the natural amount of 



HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC. 23 

intriguing, the elections about to be held in each 
assembly. 

It is no partial verdict to repeat^ that never did 
any country so small in area fill so important a place in 
the world, and never did greater wisdom preside over 
the destinies of any people. No doubt, in this great 
historic total, all is not alike praiseworthy ; the am- 
bition of the people, over-excited by immense suc- 
cesses, led them to assume a right of lordship over 
many populations who only submitted to this suze- 
rainty because they knew that the alternative was 
inevitable annexation. They courted the alliance of 
the great, and often oppressed the feeble ; but never 
elsewhere did patriotism, as in the examples of the 
Michieli, the Pisani, the Loredan, the Mocenigo, the 
Morosini, and very many others, rise to so great a 
height as often as the fatherland was in danger. 
Ten times over in the course of its history the Re- 
public was within an inch of ruin ; and ten times did 
the Council, the Senate, the College, with the Doge 
at its head (ever at one with the people in its su- 
preme resolves), stake their all with unequalled 
courage, and come out triumphant. No, the Re- 
public could not escape the general law ; but she did 
not succumb, like the greater number of other States, 
because of the imperfection of her constitution, or 
from any lack of harmony in her laws with the 
movement of men's spirits. The day on which the 
French Republic^ represented by a man destined 



24 VENICE. 

later to show the compass of his genius and ambition^ 
declared that the Venetian Eepublic had ceased to 
existj the causes which rendered the accomplishment 
of this crime possible were not due to any inherent 
decay in her institutions^ but to a thousand circum- 
stances independent of Venice herself, her customs, 
or her laws. From whatever point of view this gov- 
ernment is judged, it must be admitted that such a 
spectacle of wisdom and stability has seldom ap- 
peared before the world. True, the rein was given 
to human passions at Venice as elsewhere. True, 
intrigue, jealousy, immorality held their sway in this 
Eepublic ; the Senate was perhaps tyrannical, the 
State Inquisitors and the Council of Ten may some- 
times have encroached upon the rights of citizens ; 
at certain times they may even have established a 
reign of terror, but the profound motive which 
guided statesmen, the one fixed idea of each and all, 
was the greatness of Venice and her splendor above 
other States. Two hundred thousand inhabitants 
scattered about the lagoons, which they had trans- 
formed into a city the most beautiful in Europe, 
from the unexampled conditions of its site, grew so 
powerful as to seem like a nation of many million 
citizens, and to fill the world with their renown. 

Never has the system of check and counter-check 
been pushed so far ; never has the chastisement of 
public offenders been so severe, and never has pun- 
ishment so swiftly overtaken the perpetration of a 



HISTORY OF THE EEPUBLIC. 25 

crime against the State. When the finances of the 
Eepublic were thrown into disorder by unfaithful 
agents, sternly^ cruelly the Senate condemned to 
perpetual shame those who were thus guilty, by 
inscribing their names on the walls of the Ducal 
PalacCj untouched by the thought that the innocent 
descendants of the culprits would thus see their 
names blighted for ever. The stranger who enters 
the palace by the door opening tOAvard the Riva dei 
Schiavoni can to this day see inscribed on marble 
tablets, in the walls of the arch and of the inner 
porticos, the names of the extortioners thus held up 
to public ignominy. 

The system of information, and especially of 
anonymous information^ by citizen against citizen 
played at one time a great part in the State. There 
isj it must be confessed, something degrading in this; 
nevertheless we must remember that those who 
sanctioned the use of such means for denouncing 
political offences to the magistrates had the common 
good of their country in view^ although those who 
actually used the means had often only envy^ cu- 
pidity, or base jealousy for their motive. Never 
have the citizens of any other country accepted Avith 
such self-sacrifice every part, however onerous or 
circumscribed, assigned to them by the process of 
election for the benefit of the commonwealth. I 
have elsewhere, in a separate study^ defined the 
rights and the laborious duties of the Venetian 



26 VENICE. 

patricians of the sixteenth century. The amount of 
the labors imposed upon them by the law is appalling 
to think of. In our modern States, those who form 
what are now called the governing classes assume 
the responsibility of political work, of foreign mis- 
sions, or of close attendance at parliamentary debates 
only when they feel within themselves the desire 
and the ambition to rise to the highest offices of 
state, and when vanity or vocation impels them to 
the pursuit of poAver. But at Venice, the moment 
he approached political life, at twenty years of age, 
every nobleman was compelled to appear before a 
special magistrate, ^^avvocato del comune,'' and 
claim admission to the Great Council as a noble born 
in lawful wedlock, of noble parents inscribed in the 
Libro d'Oro. From that time till the day of his 
death, if Heaven had given him a fair share of in- 
tellect, it was all over with his liberty. It was in 
vain that his tastes might lead him toward study or 
the arts, intellectual dilettanteism or voyages of dis- 
covery ; he was chained to politics as the slave is to 
the soil. All employments, all honorable posts, all 
magistracies, all offices, were filled by election, and 
election of what a kind ! — one ten times controlled, 
unmade, remade, corroborated, and revised. It was 
forbidden to any noble to shirk the public service ; 
fines so heavy were imposed in case of refusal to 
accept an embassy or foreign mission that such re- 
fusals rarely occurred. 



HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC. 27 

The noble takes his seat at the beginning of life 
in the Great Council. There he serves on com- 
mittees which overwhelm him with work ; from the 
Great Council he ascends to the Senate^ and as mem- 
ber of the Great Council of State he may be elected 
to make one of the College of Wisemen^ to use the 
habitual expression ; he may be appointed to one or 
another of numberless posts in connection with the 
various departments of the public service ; as terri- 
torial administration, diplomacy, justice, the arsenal, 
the inquisition, the mint, the government of the uni- 
versity of Padua, and the rest. Often, indeed, he 
may fill several of such offices at once, and no mat- 
ter what his age, if the State determines that his 
services and faculties are useful to the public, he 
can under no pretext give himself up to repose. No 
more, if he is called to the supreme power, can he 
refuse the perilous honor of the Doge's crown ; and 
generally, the first magistrate of the Eepublic, the 
representative of the State, wearing upon his brows 
the horned cap and on his shoulders the mantle of 
gold and ermine, is an old man whose step totters as 
he descends the Giants' Staircase, an old man 
broken with years and ripe for the grave, his gray 
head bowed beneath the weight of life and public 
cares, his aged body often scarred with wounds re- 
ceived in the service of his country. But even on 
the brink of eternity, this noble, full of years and 
honors, is still at the service of the State to which 



28 VENICE. 

he has devoted his life, and to which he is about to 
consecrate his last hour. 

VITTOR PISANI. 

As soon as their country is in danger a wonderful 
enthusiasm possesses the entire population ; every 
man is ready to sacrifice fortune, blood, or life. Let 
others write an exact and connected history of the 
Venetian Eepublic — I only intend to recall some of 
those living episodes in her history which show the 
greatness of her citizens and their devoted attach- 
ment to St. Mark, or the severity of the punishment 
which overtook them when they betrayed their 
country. 

It was in the year 1378 ; the Genoese had vowed 
the ruin of the Venetians, and attacked them at the 
same time both in their colonies of Istria and Dal- 
matia and on the Italian coast. Vittor Pisani, a fa- 
mous general of the Republic, had just won a battle 
at Cattaro ; he had divided his troops, sent back his 
sick and wounded in some of his ships, and was on 
his return to Venice. At the mouth of the Gulf of 
Quarnero he meets the Genoese fleet, at the point of 
Pola. Now, it was usual for the Senate to delegate 
certain '^ provveditori " on board the flagship, with 
authority to hold councils of war with the officer in 
command of the campaign. The moment Pisani 
sees the Genoese offering battle, he holds a council, 
and explains that, not having his full complement, 



HISTOKY OF THE REPUBLIC. 29 

some of his people being on shore^ his ships badly 
equipped at the close of a campaign^ his ranks 
thinned^ he may well be defeated. ^' Fight/^ reply 
the provveditori ; Pisani sounds the charge^ his van 
retreats^ he rallies his ships^ and leads them again 
toward the enemy ; points out to the provveditori 
the two lines of battle^ one close, compact, prepared 
to conquer ; the other weak, thin, and badly ranged. 
One of the provveditori asks him if the Pisani are 
woman-hearted! Once more Pisani sounds to 
charge, pushes his own galley to the front, and, 
standing sword in hand, throws himself into the 
midst of the enemy, crying out, '' Who loves St. 
Mark follows me.^' By his impetuosity he breaks 
through the Genoese line ; but that line closes be- 
hind him, and by a skilful manoeuvre the enemy 
captures seventeen galleys, and nineteen hundred 
men are put to the sword. Vittor Pisani sees the 
overthrow, wheels about, once more breaks through 
the line, and escapes the massacre with Michel 
Zeno. 

The fleet is dispersed, the convoy of merchandise 
which it was escorting from the Levant becomes the 
spoil of the enemy, and the victorious Genoese cross 
the gulf to lay siege to Venice. They first take 
Chioggia, then force the passage of the lagoon and 
bombard the city of the Doges. In the meantime 
Pisani, who had fled like the wind with the few gal- 
leys he could muster^ enters the port, presents him- 



30 VENICE. 

self before the Senate^ is arrested and thrown into 
prison. 

The fatherland is in danger, her people are called 
upon to defend her, arms are ready for distribution 
to all volunteers. No volunteers appear, bands are 
organized by force among the people ; they refuse to 
serve^ and assemble under the prison windows, cry- 
ing, ^^ Pisanij Pisani ! we will have Pisani for our 
leader.'' At night the whole city is on foot, and 
immense crowds gather under the windows of the 
Council Chamber, and thence throng again to the 
prisons, demanding that Pisani should be given up. 
Sick and wounded, the great captain drags himself 
to his prison window, through the bars of which his 
voice can be heard ; he has caught the clamor under- 
neath, and answers by his battle-cry of '^ Glory to St. 
Mark!'' Nevertheless the tumult increases ; it is no 
longer a mere popular movement which may be re- 
pressed, it is the grumbling of' sedition about to 
triumph, at the very moment the enemy's galleys 
are entering the gulf and the city itself is threatened. 
The Doge trembles, the Senate, holding permanent 
sittings, gives the order to open the prison ; Pisani, 
supported by two prisoners, is carried in triumph to 
the Ducal Palace, and there kneels before the Doge, 
the emblem of the country and the symbol of power. 
At dawn he is hurried to St. Mark's, and the Patri- 
arch, amidst the acclamations of the crowd, confides 
to him the standard of the Republic. He returns 



The Ducal Palace 



HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC. 31 

thanks to the people, and crying '^ Glory to St. 
Mark V^ swears to die or conquer. They conduct 
him to his palace, but he leaves it at once for the 
arsenal to organize his expedition ^ for to-morrow 
he will start. Before dawn he has returned to St. 
Mark's, to kneel again at the foot of the altar, always 
followed by the people ; night and day, in a state of 
indescribable enthusiasm, they make a guard of 
honor for him, to assure themselves of his presence ; 
he has constantly to show himself on the balconies 
to salute the crowd. Now ready to start, the hero 
comes out of the basilica and crosses the Piazzetta ; 
his galley is in waiting at the quay ; he harangues 
the crowd: ^^Emo guards Chioggia,, Zeno and 
Mocenigo are in full sail and will be among us to- 
morrow ; the Genoese have even now attacked us 
within the very lagoon.. But we have conquered 
too often not to conquer again ; the Senate has 
arms, you have numbers, nothing but valor is 
wanted, this you will have, and with the help of 
God and St. Mark we shall win.'' 

The anchor is weighed and they depart. From 
that beautiful window of th-e Ducal Palace which 
overlooks the water, the aged Doge and the entire 
Council answer the shouts of the populace and send 
their blessings after him who but yesterday lay pin- 
ing in a prison, regarded almost as a traitor ; a thou- 
sand boats follow them wishing them victory and 
shouting ^^ Glory to St. Mark!'' Fourteen galleys 



32 VENICE. 

and thirty galeasses went out to meet the enemy, 
following the flagship of Pisani. The enthusiasm 
in the city was so great that arms were forged on 
the public piazza. Old men, women, and children, 
all wanted arms. A few days later, on the 9th of 
September, at the meeting of the Senate, the vener- 
able Contarini, who was then Doge, declared that 
he would be of more use in a galley than on the 
Ducal throne. In two days that wonderful arsenal 
of Venice, which accomplished such marvels of 
activity in any crisis of national danger, equipped 
fifty galleys, which started under the command of 
the Doge Andrea Contarini. Pisani had not counted 
too highly on his valor, and the Venetians had been 
right to break his irons, for the great commander 
saved the Republic. 

Two years afterward, when he was in command 
at Manfredonia, he attacked the enemy in spite of 
illness ; his lieutenant was wounded in the first 
encounter, and his galleys broke order ; the enemy 
taking advantage of this confusion escaped him. 
Thus helpless on his galley, and powerless to rally 
his own ships and bear down upon the fugitives, and 
disperse their fleet, the hero died in a delirium. 
His body was brought back to Venice ; nobles and 
people bewailed themselves together in the streets, 
and his death was looked upon as a public misfor- 
tune : ^^ Pisani, our stay and our standard, is dead,'' 
was the cry of the city. The Senate, ever cold and 



HISTOEY OF THE REPUBLIC. 33 

stern on principle, considering all sacrifice mere 
duty to the Republic^ made no official demonstration^ 
but the praises of the dead were in every mouth. 
They appointed Carlo Zeno as his successor, while 
the whole of Venice designated Loredano. 

THE CONSPIRACY AND DEATH OF MARINO FALIERO. 

In another episode, one of the most celebrated 
and dramatic in the history of Venice, we may see 
how sternly she punished the crime of treason. 
The name of Marino Faliero recalls a tale of dark- 
ness, and his place stands empty in the frieze of the 
Great Council Chamber among the portraits of all 
the doges who succeeded each other from Theodore 
Ursat in 742 down to Manin in 1788. He belonged 
to an illustrious family which had already given two 
doges to the Republic, Vitale Faliero, in 1082, and 
Ordelaffo who died fighting the Hungarians (1117). 

At the time of Marino's election (1354) he was 
filling the office of ambassador of the Republic to 
the Papal court, and was already in his eightieth 
year. He was both a merchant and a soldier, a man 
of self-asserting and violent character : he was ac- 
cused of having compromised the dignity of his 
office by a public scandal caused by his hot temper 
and want of self-control. While he was magistrate 
at Treviso he was to take part on one occasion in a 
procession ; the bishop was late in coming, and by 
the time he appeared Marino had waxed so furious 
3 



34 VENICE. 

that he received him with a violent box on the ear. 
The Senate was obliged to disavow their agent, and 
for this indiscretion he had to submit to the dis- 
ciplinary penalty applicable to a high official. 

In the time of the great war against the Genoese, 
a war so disastrous, yet on the whole so glorious 
to the Republic, out of which she came with so 
much honor, Genoa had boasted her Doria, Venice 
her Pisani. Marino Faliero had just signed the 
treaty which restored peace to the country. Noth- 
ing seemed left to disturb the close of his career, 
till one memorable Thursday in Carnival week, at 
a ball given by the Doge in the Ducal Palace, a 
young noble named Michel Steno, a member of the 
criminal tribunal called the ^^ Forty,'' under cover 
of the mask, which often gave almost licentious free- 
dom to these assemblies, allowed himself to be be- 
trayed into some familiarities with one of the ladies 
in the suite of the Dogaressa. The old Doge, with 
his hot and jealous nature, forgetful of his own 
youthful follieSj took the matter up with a high hand, 
and ordered the imprudent Steno to be expelled 
from the palace. As Michel Steno, boiling with in- 
dignation at the affront thus put upon him before 
all the nobles of Venice, passed through the Great 
Council Chamber on his way out, he Avent up the 
steps of the Ducal throne, and fastened to the very 
seat itself a paper on which he had written, " Marino 
Faliero with the handsome wife — he keeps her^ but 



HISTORY OF THE EEPUBLIC. 35 

another has her favors.'' In the confusion of the 
festivities the deed passed unnoticed ; but the next 
day, at the opening of the sitting of the Great 
Council^ the officials discovered the billet ; the noise 
of the insult offered to the head of the Republic 
spread rapidly through the palace^ and all pointed 
out the unmistakable author of the scandal. Michel 
Steno was young ; and understanding that he might 
pay dearly for a moment of folly, he frankly con- 
fessed his fault, and manifested the sincerest repent- 
ance. FalierOj though seeing him thus penitent, 
was not appeased ; and demanded that he should be 
put on his trial, and that the offence, having been 
committed against the head of the State, should be 
treated as a public crime and be declared amenable 
to the Council of Ten, who were sure to pronounce 
a most severe sentence. The matter was discussed 
in public sitting ; but whether it was that allowance 
was made for the youth of the offender, whether he 
was personally popular, or whether the practical 
men who composed the Senate were unwilling to 
give to the person of the Doge that character of 
sovereignty which they had so long been fighting 
against, Steno was simply arraigned before his com- 
peers of the Forty, and condemned to two months' 
imprisonment, and, after undergoing this, to one 
year's exile from the territory of the Republic. 

Marino Faliero did not consider this punishment 
proportionate to the offence^ and earnestly protested 



36 VENICE. 

before the College^ as well as the Senate^ and even 
before the Great Council ; but all in vain, the tribu- 
nal had given its decision. From thenceforth Faliero 
cherished his resentment and meditated revenge ; — 
he might perhaps never have followed up the 
schemes of which his mind was fall, if it had not 
been for a singular circumstance which occurred on 
the very day he was informed of Steno's sentence. 
We know that among the prerogatives of the Doge 
w^as that of administering justice to all who chose to 
have recourse to his tribunal. Any person holding 
himself wronged was free to come to the palace, 
and appeal directly to the chief of the Republic ; it 
was a patriarchal custom, a satisfaction given to the 
lower classes, who availed themselves largely of it, 
and did not fear to come to the foot of the throne 
to claim justice against any act of tyranny committed 
by a patrician. Accordingly, on this very day of 
Steno's condemnation, at the opening of the audience, 
a man in great excitement, his face covered with 
blood, presented himself before Marino Faliero, stat- 
ing that he belonged to the arsenal, where he occu- 
pied the place of '^ admiral '' or chief foreman, and 
that he came to claim justice against a patrician who 
had assaulted him, and of whose violence he bore the 
still bleeding traces. Marino Faliero, instead of 
dealing with the case as it stood, treated it as a coin- 
cidence, and answered with resentful sarcasm, '' How 
can I render you justice against a patrician^ when I; 



HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC. 37 

the Doge, cannot obtain justice for myself, though 
most bitterly insulted V^ '' For all that/' replied the 
dark-eyed superintendent, ^^if you and I chose, it 
would depend on ourselves to be avenged upon those 
haughty and insolent fellows.'' The Doge, discern- 
ing in this man an accomplice and a tool, made no 
effort to pacify him, but showed a kindly interest in 
him, obtained some details from him as to how his 
companions were disposed, and dismissed him even 
more excited than when he entered the Ducal Palace. 
Scarcely outside the door, the man started off to 
gather his friends together, armed himself, and pro- 
ceeded to the palace of his adversary, uttering loud 
threats of vengeance. The patrician, finding him- 
self held up to the animosity of a large body of 
arsenal laborers, denounced Israel Bertuccio (this 
was the name of the injured superintendent) to the 
Signory, who summoned him to appear before them. 
In presence of the members of the College, over 
which tribunal he by right presided, Marino Faliero 
was forced ostensibly to blame Israel ; he even 
threatened him with death if he continued to incite 
the workmen of the arsenal against a patrician. 
But at nightfall Marino sent a messenger to summon 
the man he had treated so severely before the sena- 
tors, and had him admitted secretly into the ducal 
apartments, where he found the Doge alone with 
his nephew, Bertuccio FalierO; who had espoused 
his uncle's quarrel. 



38 VENICE. 

This interview was the first step in the crime of 
conspiracy against the State ; but it was not de- 
cisive. Marino had seen a man outraged like him- 
self by a noble^ like himself full of resentment, and 
belonging to a body which^ he believed^ was ready 
to take up his quarrel ; he acquainted himself with 
the temper of Israel Bertuccio's companions, calcu- 
lated their numbers, and found out what means he 
had at his disposal. The first name pronounced by 
Israel is one illustrious in the arts, though compara- 
tively unfamiliar because of the early date to which 
it belongs ; it was that of Filippo Calendario. This 
Calendario was at once an engineer and sculptor of 
great ability, and a distinguished architect; he had 
rapidly passed through all stages of promotion, and 
from a very low position, as a working shipbuilder 
in the arsenal, had risen to be director of public 
buildings to the Signory. He was a kind of inspec- 
tor-general, or director of public works. To him we 
owe the splendid fabric of the Ducal Palace ; he also 
gave the general plan of St. Mark's Place and the 
Piazzetta. Fired by the love of art, and in a true 
spirit of progressive enterprise, he conjured the 
Senate, in an eloquent speech, to make of this 
beautiful piazza, where the basilica already stood, a 
forum and a sanctuary of art. If we are to believe 
Marin Sanuto, the great Venetian chronicler whose 
narratives serve as a basis for all the histories, 
Israel Bertuccio gave the name of Calendario as a 



HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC. 39 

man ready for anything that might humiliate the 
pride of the nobles. But Selvatico's notice of Cal- 
endario suggests another explanation ; for there we 
find that Calendario was IsraeFs son-in-law^ and this 
seems reason enough for his having espoused his 
quarrel. Marino Faliero had been the artist's pa- 
tron ; by his interest he had appointed him to one 
of the first positions in the State that could be held 
by a man whose profession was civil and military 
engineering and the fine arts ; he knew that this 
Calendario was a fiery and adventurous spirit^ and 
much engrossed in politics. Perhaps^ too^ the at- 
tempts of Pietro Gradenigo against the independ- 
ence of the Venetian people^ the memory of Marino 
Bocconio^ of Giovanni Baldovino^ of Marco Querinij 
and of Bayamonte Tiepolo had left in the soul of the 
artist a desire for vengeance ; perhaps, in short, he 
' belonged to that party of the " oppressed '^ who con- 
sidered themselves vanquished in the great struggle, 
of which the fourteenth century had been witness, 
between the nobles and the people in Venice. 
Whatever the motives may have been which drove 
him into the conspiracy, it is certain that Calendario 
entered completely into the ideas of the Doge and 
of Israel Bertuccio the superintendent of the arsenal. 
There were several secret meetings, all held in the 
Ducal Palace, and the plan of the conspiracy was 
determined with the Doge himself and Bertuccio 
Faliero. Sixteen chiefs were chosen, one from 



40 VENICE. 

every quarter, and each of them were to secure 
sixtv well-armed followers, or barely a thousand 
men for the whole city. At break of day, the Doge 
undertook that he would set the great bell of the ba- 
silica ringing, and at this signal, alarm was to be 
sown among the people in every quarter by the an- 
nouncement that the Genoese fleet had appeared in 
the lagoon. This gives us the clue to the anxieties 
of the moment. Doria the Genoese commander had 
become the bugbear of the Venetians, and they 
looked upon the Genoese as always ready for an in- 
vasion. When the tumult was at its height the 
conspirators were to group themselves on St. Mark's 
Place and to massacre the nobles as they entered the 
Council. This plan was to be carried out on the 
15th of April, 1355. 

Israel Bertuccio and Calendario had not deemed it 
prudent to divulge the object of their rising to all the 
conspirators ; however, those who were to a certain 
extent leaders of the masses had to be made ac- 
quainted with the projects they were employed to 
carry out. A furrier called Bertrand, who had a 
part of some importance to play in the action, had 
received some kindnesses from a noble, and wishing 
to show his gratitude, he warned him not to leave 
his house on the 15th of April. This noble was a 
senator named Nicolo Lioni ; he kept on his guard, 
but at the same time insisted upon knowing the solu- 
tion of the mystery. Bertrand entreated him to 



HISTOEY OF THE KEPUBLIC. 41 

profit by his advice without inquiring further ; 
Nicolo refused to hold his tongue, and on the con- 
trary had Bertrand arrested and threatened to de- 
nounce him to the Senate. The frightened conspira- 
tor, imagining himself already before the supreme 
tribunal, did not hesitate to take credit to himself 
for his crime, and revealed all he knew, and although 
he was acquainted only with the acts to be accom- 
plished and not with the end to be attained, the 
senator learned enough to guess that there was a 
plot afoot, not only to change the form of government, 
but at the same time to give a final blow to the aris- 
tocracy. Nicolo hurried to the Doge (for Faliero's 
name had not been mentioned), and denounced the 
conspiracy to him ; the Doge answered that he knew 
of it already, and that the noble was certainly exag- 
gerating its importance. At these words Lioni 
began to suspect Marino Faliero, and ran to Gio- 
vanni Gradenigo, and from him to Marco Cornaro ; 
and as Bertrand was still in custody, they all went 
together to the palace where this accomplice of 
IsraePs was detained, and questioned him. As he 
knew nothing except from Bertuccio and Calendario, 
he informed against them ; and the patricians, for 
whom by this time the Ducal Palace had become a 
place of suspicion, met in permanent sitting at the 
convent of San Salvatore. Thither was convoked 
the College, the Council of Ten, the advocates of 
the Commune^ the chiefs of the Forty, the Signors 



42 VENICE. 

of the Nighty and the chiefs of the six divisions of 
the city. These authorities had the public force at 
their disposal ; they first of all arrested Israel Ber- 
tuccio and Filippo Calendario, and put them to the 
torture ; these prisoners disclosed the names of some 
of their accomplices, and the means by which the 
plot was to be put into effect, and even designated 
the Doge. The first thing was to hinder the accom- 
plishment of these plans by preventing the signal 
being given from the top of St. Mark's ; next Calen- 
dario and Bertuccio were hanged from the window 
of the Ducal Palace which overlooks the Piazzetta 
and lights the voting hall. 

On the very day when the plot laid by Marino 
Faliero was to have been realized, he was dragged 
before a tribunal composed of the Council of Ten, 
and twenty nobles elected by the Great Council. 
On the 15th the tribunal proceeded to his examina- 
tion ; he appeared in state apparel, the ducal cap on 
his head, the gold and ermine robe on his shoulders, 
and confessed all, giving the reasons for his deter- 
mination. It was in keeping with the spirit of the 
Venetian government to proceed rapidly and to act 
promptly. The Doge had been arrested on the 
night of the 15th-16th ; he had confessed ; on the 
16th judgment was given ] the pain of death was 
unanimously pronounced. On the 17th at the dawn 
of day, the preparations for the execution were 
made ; the gates of the palace being still closed^ 



HISTOKY OF THE KEPUBLIC. 43 

Marino Faliero was led to the first steps of the 
Giants' Staircase, and on the very spot where he had 
received the ducal robe and coronet his head was 
cut off in the presence of the Council of Ten^ of the 
delegates of the Senate, and of a certain number of 
the highest functionaries of the State. The execu- 
tion accomplished, the chief of the Council ordered 
the doors thrown open ; the noise of the sinister 
ceremony spread through the city ; — the people 
thronged the court of the Ducal Palace and there 
beheld the body of him who had been the chief of 
the Eepublic lying dead on the ground. To give a 
public sanction to the execution, the whole Council 
of Ten repaired to the voting hall, and the president, 
holding the still bloody sword in his hand, solemnly 
announced that justice had been done to the traitor 
who had conspired against the State. 

For a long time, acts of reprisal occurred and re- 
searches were made in order to punish all who might 
directly or indirectly have been concerned in the 
plot. Out of nine hundred and sixty conspirators, 
more than four hundred were discovered and con- 
demned to death or exile ; the two principal leaders, 
Israel Bertuccio and Filippo Calendario, having 
been the first to be executed. Calendario lived at 
San Severe ; on the night of the 15th of April he 
had been asleep when he heard a violent knocking 
at his door ; it was Angelo Micheli, the Captain of 
the Republic, with his armed police, who had come 



44 VENICE. 

to secure his person. As has been said, Calendario 
made a full confession ; neither his services nor his 
exceptional talents were taken into consideration ; 
he was hung with Israel from the red prophyry 
column of the great window of the palace, looking 
out on the Piazzetta. Calendario's wife was a 
daughter of this same Israel Bertuccio, and this 
fact explains the prominent part he took in the 
conspiracy. The widow dragged on a miserable 
life for some few years after and soon died. A son^ 
Nicolo, who had not been convicted of any share in 
the plot, was nevertheless kept in prison, and died 
in one of those dungeons of the Ducal Palace called 
'^the wells;'' dungeons on a level with the soil of 
the Court and panelled inside with wood ; gloomy 
places, no doubt, but of which the horrors have been 
exaggerated by novelists and poets like Cooper and 
Lord Byron. 

Bertrand, who had betrayed the conspiracy, — on 
the strength of his information, which he said had 
saved the Republic, made bold to ask the Senate for 
Marino Faliero's palace and lands ; and not satisfied 
with this, claimed the patriciate for himself and his 
descendants. The Senate rewarded him brilliantly. 
In his " Life of the Doges '' Marin Sanuto says he 
had only heard that it was intended to admit the 
informer to the Great Council as the price of his 
information ; but Andrea Managero, who is quite as 
serious an historian^ goes into fuller particulars^ and 



HISTOKY OF THE REPUBLIC. 45 

here are his own words : ^^ Bertrand, by a decree of 
the Council^ was granted a pension of a thousand 
gold ducats for himself and his heirs direct ; he was 
given a house worth two thousand ducats and was 
admitted to the Grreat Council. But he declared 
himself not satisfied, and claimed besides the county 
of Val Marino, which had been confiscated in favor 
of the Doge. The Senate having refused him this, 
he went about the city accusing the College of in- 
gratitude and railing against its members. These 
reproaches came to the ears of the Senators ; they 
passed sentence upon him and he was condemned to 
the gallows ; later his sentence was commuted to ten 
years' exile at Ragusa." 

The history of Venice has rung with the fame 
of this conspiracy of Marino Faliero. Romance, 
poetry, and the drama have laid hold upon it^ and 
its tradition lives after more than five hundred 
years ; yet it ought to be remembered that this con- 
spiracy did not take its rise in the ambition of any 
single man ; it was the passion of jealousy and 
anger alone which drove a venerable man of eighty, 
the head of the Republic, to attempt to seize the sole 
power, and perhaps it is to this very character that 
this bloody episode owes a fame which has surpassed 
that of the great but purely political conspiracies of 
Marino Bocconio and of Bayamonte Tiepolo. Even 
to this day, the traveller who visits the Ducal Pal- 
ace^ when he folio ws^ in the frieze which ornaments 



46 VENICE. 

the ceiling of the Great Council Chamber^ the por- 
traits of the Doges who have succeeded one another 
from the creation of the ducal office to the fall of the 
Eepublicj stops with emotion before the empty frame 
where the painter has written on a scroll — " Hie est 
locus Marini Falethri^ decapitati pro criminibus." 

DANIEL MANIN. 

Episodes in plenty there are in this history to fur- 
nish the writer with chapters brilliant or sombre, 
tragic or splendid, black as the dungeons of the 
Council of Ten, or dazzling as the Queen of the 
Adriatic herself on a summer's day. Who could 
help being moved ? At every step the city breathes 
history ; every stone is eloquent. Here, in the 
twelfth century, before the great door of St. Mark's, 
Frederic Barbarossa bowed the knee to a proscribed 
pope ; there, nearly seven hundred years later, the 
citizens of the same Venice, fallen, dethroned, en- 
slaved, repaired to the prisons to claim freedom for 
the last champion of her liberty, Daniel Manin. 

Let us suppose ourselves in 1177 ; after the great 
struggle of the Lombard league, the Republic has 
triumphed over the Emperor, the Venetian fleet has 
captured and brought into St. Mark's port forty- 
eight German galleys, and on board one, Barba- 
rossa's own son who was in command. Peace is 
signed, and Frederic comes to humble himself be- 
fore the fugitive Pope. The historian Sabellicus 



HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC. 47 

relates the scene in a dramatic ^tyle ; and more than 
one painter has taken it for the subject of his pic- 
ture. The Emperor, on the approach of the Pope, 
threw off his mantle and prostrated himself to kiss 
his feet. Alexander, seeing before him on his knees 
the prince who for twenty years had pursued him 
from one place of refuge to another, could think of 
nothing but the two rival powers. Pope and Em- 
peror, and forgot himself so far as to put his foot on 
Barbarossa's head, quoting the words of the psalm, 
'^ Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder ; the 
young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under 
feet." At this the sovereign proudly raised his 
head, and, grasping the pontiff's foot, exclaimed, 
" It is before Peter that I humble myself, and not 
before thee." Alexander, instead of checking him- 
self and controlling his own movement of anger and 
pride, insisted the more, saying, ^^ Before me and 
Peter both — Et mihi et Petro.^^ 

Does not the charm of history add itself at every 
step to that of art, Avhen we replace pictures like 
these in their proper frames ? On that same Piaz- 
zetta where we have seen Pisani carried in triumph 
by the people, Daniel Manin also was received with 
acclamation and carried on the shield ; this was yet 
another day of glory for Venice, the effort of a 
downcast people who in struggling to rise fall only 
the more heavily, till the day comes at last when 
liberty is restored to them for good. 



48 VENICE. 

The name of Daniel Manin Is the last great 
political name in Venetian history. Italy was not 
yet constituted, the idea of unity was scarcely more 
than a vague dream in the heads and hearts of a 
few far-sighted politicians and ardent patriots. The 
kingdom of to-day may claim Manin as a citizen of 
Italy, since Italy is one ; but he was essentially a 
Venetian, of the great race of the Michieli, the 
Pisani, and the Mocenigo. He was born in Venice 
in 1804. His father was a lawyer ; he himself was 
a doctor of laws at seventeen, but as he could not 
practise before the age of twenty-four, he set him- 
self to his studies again, and became a profound 
jurist. From his early youth he had felt a deep 
depression at the thought of his country's subjection 
to Austria ; he began a secret propaganda, and 
formed the project of a rebellion. Shut up in a 
little carpenter's shop at the very top of the house 
in which he lived at San Paternian, he drew up and 
printed, with the help of a lithographic stone, an 
appeal to arms which his companions slipped by 
night under the door of every house in Venice. 

In 1838, in the discussion of some question of 
local interest, he knew how to find a response in the 
heart of the masses by openly attacking the govern- 
ment which was oppressing the country. This is 
the real starting-point of his popularity. The sub- 
ject in question was the plan of a railway to run 
between Venice and Milan. However indirect and 



Chamber of the Council of Ten^ Ducal Palace 



HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC. 49 

foreign to the question of political emancipation this 
might appear^ the people understood Manin's action 
and his character ; they had found the leader of the 
movement which was by and by to take shape and 
lead to the departure of the Austrians. Manin lost 
no opportunity of speaking. He received Cobden, 
and welcomed Cormenin ; when the patriot Padovani 
was confined as a lunatic, he made a legal protest and 
unceasingly claimed his liberation ; when Domene- 
ghettij a young and enthusiastic student, ventured 
to cry ^^ Long live Pius IX. !'' and was forced to 
enlist in a German regiment to expiate his crime — 
for it was at this time considered a crime, as the 
Pope was the representative of liberal ideas in Italy 
— Manin took his cause in hand and defended it with 
the greatest vehemence. 

On the 21st of December, 1848, Daniel urged the 
liberal deputies to demand reform from the Austrians ; 
he directed the demonstration in which the poet 
Tommaseo openly, in full Athenaeum, attacked the 
censorship of the press. At last, on the 18th of 
January, 1848, he was arrested and avowed his part 
in all liberal manifestations ; Tommaseo soon shared 
the same fate. The population of Venice, anxious 
to show their sympathy with the prisoners, left the 
theatres empty ; many put on mourning ; and at four 
o'clock in the afternoon they came in crowds before 
the prison, the men uncovering their heads and the 
women waving their handkerchiefs. On the 5th of 

4 



50 VENICE. 

February, hearing that the Neapolitans had obtained 
a constitution, they resolved to repair to the Fenice ; 
all the women of fashion had agreed to wear tri- 
colored ribbons, and when La Cerito danced the 
Siciliana, she was thrown three wreaths, one of red 
camellias, another of white camellias, and a third of 
green leaves. The governor Palfy ordered the 
house to be cleared, but that the carrying out of this 
might not be left to the shirrij Comello, a young 
Italian who had already requested all the ladies to 
leave, appeared in one of the front boxes crying out 
^^Fuori tutti'^ — and the armed force found the hall 
empty. There was at this time the most perfect 
understanding between all these oppressed citizens ; 
the drawing-room and the street, the palace and the 
garret, were agreed, and all hearts beat in unison ; 
the patrician and the gondolier suffered from the 
same grief. The patriots decreed that there should 
be no more smoking, in order to deprive the Austrian 
government of the benefit of the duty ; every even- 
ing, at the hour when the soldiers came to play on 
St. Mark's Place, these music-loving Italians re- 
treated to their houses. Such demonstrations, added 
to those of Milan and Florence, led to tlie proclama- 
tion of the state of siege at Venice. The revolution 
of February broke out in France ; it communicated 
its effects to Germany, and Venice became more and 
more excited. Agitation showed itself in a hundred 
ways. The Duke of Eagusa was insulted in the 



HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC. 51 

streets ; the purport of councillor Zanetti's report 
was known^ he had declared Manin and Tommaseo 
innocent^ and their release was now demanded, and 
obtained at last by intimidation. The whole people 
rosCj revolution was imminent ; they hurried to the 
prison to tell Manin he was free^ and carried the 
great patriot on a shield all around St. Mark's Place^ 
where he harangued the people ; thence they went 
to the little house at San Paternian, the modest 
dwelling in which he lived with his family, and 
which is still an object of pious care to the Vene- 
tians. 

While Manin was embracing his daughter the 
people hoisted the Italian flag and paraded it through 
the streets ; a German actress, Goldberg, threw two 
more flags out of a window of the Procuratie, which 
were hoisted on the masts of the Piazza. The 
governor, seeing this, had the alarm-gun fired, and 
the Piazza occupied by the military. A struggle 
followed, blood was shed ; street fighting is easy in 
Venice when the bridges are cut. Manin continued 
to counsel legal resistance, but was overpowered ; it 
was then he accomplished a great act which saved 
Venice from anarchy — the organization of the civic 
guard. 

The Austrian government granted four hundred 
guards, Manin raised four thousand, and defended 
the people against their own excesses. On the 15th 
of May, 1848, the Austrians having at last promised 



52 VENICE. 

a constitution, and the agitation continually increas- 
ing, the German regiments began to waver, and the 
governor to lose his head. An officer of marines 
called Salvini managed on the 19th to reach Manin, 
and announced to him that in face of the insurrec- 
tion the Austrians had decided to bombard the town^ 
and that the only way of saving it was to take pos- 
session of the arsenal. From that moment the idea 
worked in Manin's mind, and he put it into execu- 
tion with incredible firmness and energy. Without 
firing a shot, forcing Marshal Martini to give way 
before the threatening insurrection, substituting for 
him with his own consent a Colonel Graziani, arm- 
ing the workmen and distributing them into com- 
panies, seizing the guns, the arms, the entire arsenal, 
he stationed there trustworthy officers, and finally 
repaired to St. Mark's Place to proclaim the Re- 
public to the characteristic cry of ^^ Viva San Marco!" 
A provisional government was nominated, and the 
same day the Austrian government signed its capitu- 
lation. Venice was her&elf once more ; the Patri- 
arch sang the Te Deum ; Manin was acclaimed 
President, and Pius IX. did not hesitate to bless the 
new Republic. For eleven months Manin, standing 
ever in the breach, played there the part that Lamar- 
tine played in Paris from February to the end of 
April ; appeasing the grumblings of sedition, render- 
ing justice, repressing excesses, speaking night and 
day to control the seething passions of the time. 



HISTOKY OF THE REPUBLIC. 53 

On the 2e3rd of March^ 1849^ while Venice was 
celebrating the anniversary of her Republic^ Charles 
Albert fell at Novara. This was a new danger for 
Venice^ and accordingly^ on the 27th of March^ the 
Austrian general Haynau sent a message to the 
chamber of duputies summoning them to surrender 
the city to its lawful masters. Manin convoked the 
representatives and obtained a decision to this effect : 
'^ Venice will resist at all costs ; and to this end 
Manin is invested with discretionary power.'' The 
red flag was hoisted from the Campanile of the 
Piazza. Thirty thousand Austrians encircled the 
lagoons with an immense park of artillery and all 
the necessary materials for a long siege ; and Admiral 
Dahlrup blockaded Venice on the side toward the 
sea. 

The siege of Venice is epical as the Odyssey. 
The Venetians under Manin's leadership accom- 
plished miracles of valor. M. Anatole de la Forge 
in his Histoire de la Eepublique de Venise has given 
a moving narrative of the daily events of this 
drama. The bombardment was terrible, and the 
cholera added its horrors to those that fell upon the 
mighty city. Manin attended to everything; by 
turns engineer, statesman, diplomatist, at one mo- 
ment taking part in a sortie as a private soldier, 
at another organizing the defence or electrifying the 
spirits of the besieged by his eloquence. The 
people called incessantly for him before the windows 



54 VENICE. 

of the Ducal Palace — '' Fuori Manin '' — and Manin 
bj turns stirred or stilled the tumultuous masses. 

The people were heroic, Manin was sublime ; at 
every moment he braved the bayonets of the Aus- 
trians — even those of his fellow-citizens^ for there 
were internal risings to be put down. At length, 
when the last bit of bread was eaten, the last ducat 
spent, the last ball fired, Venice capitulated on the 
24th of August, 1849. 

Manin was exiled, and set out for France. His 
wife and daughter both died on the journey. In 
Paris he lived from hand to mouth by giving lessons 
in Italian. He was great in his fall as he had been in 
his triumph, steeped in calumnies, but crowning by 
virtue and unostentatious poverty one of the most 
loyal, pure, and noble careers of modern times. 

Seventeen years afterward, Venice, rescued from 
the Austrians, claimed from France the body of her 
heroic son, and brought it back in splendid state to 
St. Mark's on board the Bucentaur, feeling that the 
soil of the land of exile would weigh too heavily on 
the great patriot who had so loved his country. 



CHAPTEE II. 

THE AKCHIVES OF VENICE IN THE MONASTEKY 
OF SANTA MAEIA GLORTOSA DEI FRARI. 

In the mind of the trained student of historical 
manuscripts^ the whole past of Venice lives again 
when he visits the ancient monastery Sta. Maria 
Gloriosa dei Frari, and sees there the astonishing 
collection of documents which constitute the famous 
Archives of Venice. M. Armand Baschet^ an ami- 
able friend and scholar who was my guide in the 
first steps I made toward the study of Venice^ has 
devoted to this subject a very important volume^ 
which is indispensable to all who desire to work for 
themselves at these archives. To give the reader a 
succinct idea of this prodigious collection of docu- 
mentSj we should have to make a resume of M. 
Baschet's work entitled: "Archives de Venise — 
Chancellerie secrete de la JRepublique serenissimey^^ 
but we prefer to borrow from the author himself 
a short account — a brief but comprehensive view of 
the subject. The reader will certainly lose noth- 
ing by this, for it may be unhesitatingly said 
that with the exception of the keepers of the 

65 



56 VENICE. 

archives themselves, and a few special historians, 
M. Armand Baschet is the writer who knows the 
subject best. 

Strangers visit these memorials of the past just as 
they do a museum or a famous palace. Every one 
receives a warm and liberal welcome. With what 
delight one wanders through these vast rooms where 
the archives are preserved and classified ! with what 
amazement one stands before the mass of documents 
which compose the ^^ Ducal Chancery !" With what 
keen interest one penetrates into the little chambers 
known as the '^ Secret Chancery/' the holy of holies 
of this temple ! The lover of autographs will stop 
first at the cases in one of these rooms, to devour 
with covetous eyes the interesting and rare signa- 
tures which are here artistically arranged. In due 
course he will come to the great and small registers 
of the Council of Ten, who were formerly of such 
mysterious fame ; some simple folk will wonder at 
not finding them bound in black with death's heads 
at the four corners. 

The building which now contains these great ves- 
tiges of the policy and administration of Venice, 
used to be called the abbey of '' Santa Maria 
Gloriosa dei Frati minori conventuali." The title 
is long, and for shortness it was familiarly called 
'' dei Frari.'' The grand and beautiful church re- 
mained a place of worship after the suppression of 
the religious bodies in 1810 ; and the convent, one 



THE ARCHIVES. 57 

of the largest in Venice, unoccupied at first, then 
turned into barracks, was some years later appro- 
priated to the custody of all the political, adminis- 
trative, judicial, financial, territorial, and other pa- 
pers, which had been dispersed in diff'erent places 
since the fall of the Venetian Republic on the 12th 
of May, 1797. 

It would be a mistake to suppose that, while the 
Republic subsisted, there was any single place in 
which the archives of the various offices of state 
were deposited. The immense mass of documents, 
which is now to be seen in the interminable halls 
and chambers of the Frari, proceeds from a compre- 
hensive scheme of collection and preservation, for 
which there could have been no motive so long as 
those ofiices were still at work. Each department 
had its own archives ; and the phrase ^^ State 
Archives '' was not even used ; they said " Ducal 
Chancery,'' ^^ Lower Chancery,'' ^^ Secret Chancery," 
to designate one of several special collections of doc- 
uments or written evidences which the State was in- 
terested in preserving as containing the record of its 
political and administrative life. 

To realize that two hundred and sixty-four vast 
halls and chambers scarcely suffice to hold the 
papers collected together, it must be remembered 
that the actual collection contains not only the 
archives formerly distributed among the hundred 
and thirty or forty separate magistracies or depart- 



58 VENICE. 

ments of which the official world of Venice was coni- 
posedj but also the whole of the documents produced 
by the six governments which have successively ad- 
ministered the Venetian provinces since the 12th of 
May, 1797. Under the Doges, the political archives 
properly so called were kept in what was known as 
the Secret Chancery ; those belonging to the Council 
of Ten were arranged in presses and cabinets ad- 
joining the great Council Chamber ; and those of 
the State inquisitors were confided to the care of the 
secretary of that dreaded tribunal. These diff'erent 
depositories^ which were protected from any indis- 
cretion by regulations of extreme seveidty^ were all 
in the Ducal Palace. Several fires, of which two in 
the sixteenth century were the most destructive, 
caused irreparable losses to the Secret Chancery ; it 
was thus that many precious series of diplomatic 
correspondence during the Middle Ages, and from 
the taking of Constantinople by the Turks down to 
the death of Francis L, have been destroyed. Venice 
was then one of the great powers of Europe, of 
whom all the rest had to take account. Her states- 
men had won universal respect by their diplomatic 
talents. We must therefore regard as an immense 
loss to history the destruction of such important 
political documents as the despatches and reports on 
the various countries which weighed in the balance 
of European and Oriental politics during the fifteenth 
century. 



THE ARCHIVES. 59 

These archives underwent still further vicissitudes 
at the fall of Venice in 1797. They were dispersed. 
France appropriated a small number^ which she had 
to relinquish to Austria ; Austria next had to restore 
them to France, who claimed them for Italy ; and 
all this in the space of nine years (1797-1806), 
But this game of give-and-take can hardly be free 
from risk to the component items. 

In 1807 the Italian government did what it could 
to concentrate in different localities of Venice the 
principal divisions of the archives belonging to the 
old Eepublic. The ruins were still smoking. All 
that was possible was done to restore and re-unite. 
The political division was brought together at San 
TeodorOj the judicial in another place, and the 
financial in a third. This state of affairs continued 
till April of 1814, when the Austrian rule began. 
The hatred to this rule was not then what it after- 
ward became. Austria governed without too much 
annoyance to herself or to the Venetians. The Em- 
peror Francis, who up to that time had known his 
empire only in agitation and disquiet, began to relish 
the joys of peace, and the provinces experienced the 
good result. Venice was well governed and treated 
in some degree as a favored capital. Among other 
salutary steps resolved on in her honor, was one 
taken on the 13th of December, 1815, to concentrate 
in one place all the archives of all the ancient public 
offices of the city, hide fortuna . . . ct salas. 



60 VENICE. 

Thus, in 1815j was agreed upon, and admitted in 
principle, the foundation of that splendid collection 
which a few years later was inaugurated under the 
official title of Imperial and Royal general Archives 
of Venice. 

The decree of concentration once signed, it be- 
came necessary to choose a suitable building. But 
a short and quick procedure was but little known to 
the Austrian administration at that time ; nothing 
was accomplished without taking ten times as long 
as was necessary. Three years passed in selecting 
the right place, and four more in appropriating it to 
this use. The place chosen was, as we have said, 
the ancient monastery of Santa Maria Gloriosa. 
And in truth no better could have been found. It 
was in 1822 that the archives of the Most Serene 
Republic, increased by those which had since accu- 
mulatedj were definitively installed in that vast and 
picturesque resting-place, the aforesaid convent of 
the Frari, where the traveller visits them to-day. 

From the Campo, where this great and beautiful 
church stands, the public entrance to the Archives 
will be found to the left, after crossing two bridges 
closely connected by a small quay. After passing 
under the archway of this entrance, which in itself 
is in no respect remarkable, we enter a large and 
rather dilapidated court flanked by wide arcades. 
From this entrance-court, the great court of the con- 
vent, a singular and majestic enclosure called the 



THE ARCHIVES. 61 

Court of the Trinity^ is separated by a block on the 
left. The principal parts of the building look down 
upon the great court in question, which must in old 
days have been the chief promenade of the monks. 
The appearance it presents is due to the combination 
of grandeur and singularity which cannot fail to as- 
tonish all visitors. The reddish tone of one part of 
the walls^ the gray tint of the round arches^ the 
extent and width of the balustraded terraces, the 
triumphal fountain in the middle, the pavement 
blackened with time, the brick bell-tower strongly 
dominating the picture ; the exterior flank of the 
church, the long and narrow pointed doorway deli- 
cately piercing the right-hand arcade, — all these 
architectural contrasts, brought together, certainly, 
with no presiding idea of harmony, produce an as- 
tonishing effect. After the early morning, w^hen the 
chattering women and children of the neighborhood 
come to draw water from the great well at the hours 
fixed for the supply of the various adjacent quarters, 
silence reigns supreme in these cloisters ; and w^hen 
the hot southern sun flings into poetical relief all the 
parts of the noble group, the imagination can desire 
no more striking spectacle than this Cortile of the 
vast Venetian monastery. The buildings rising 
from each side of the two courts, and opening out 
also on the half-cultivated gardens which separate 
them from the little church of Saint Roch, contain 
the innumerable series of registers and portfolios 



62 VENICE. 

forming the bulk of the Venetian archives. If we 
had to explore the labyrinth of rooms the visitor is 
invited to go through, and to describe the contents 
of each one of them, our narrative would have to 
extend to encyclopaedic limits. Here, however, are 
a few accurate notes meant to give some idea of this 
colossal collection of papers. 

The systematic arrangement which has been made 
comprehends four divisions : the Political, the Judi- 
cial, the Commercial, and the Territorial. Each of 
these has its subdivisions, to which are attached the 
sections in connection with the multifarious official 
departments of the extinct Eepublic. It is, to say 
the truth, a kind of labyrinth, in which one must 
have had special practice to know how to look 
properly for what one Avishes to find. A trustworthy 
guide is indispensable. 

The number of documents collected together in 
the Frari has often been exaggerated by writers, as 
well as the the area of those parts of the building 
which contain them. We will have nothing to do 
with such extravagant figures as those sometimes 
quoted— 14,000,000 documents, 2,275 archives, 400 
halls and rooms, etc. These are fanciful figures. 
Did not the geographer Andrea Balbi, in a rare 
pamphlet published in 1835, undertake the absurd 
task of setting, and pretending to solve, inconceiv- 
able problems as to the material bulk of the 
Archives ? His calculations are past belief. A 



Church of Santa Maria de^ Frari 



THE ARCHIVES. 63 

geographer through thick and thin, he proves that 
the shelves containing the classed portfolios, if 
ranged one after another, would form a line half as 
long again as the distance between Paris and Ver- 
sailles ; he affects to show that the separate leaves, 
numbering approximately 693,176,720, would form 
a band 1,444,800,000 feet long, going eleven times 
round the circumference of the earth. He is at 
last quite carried away by his geographical enthusi- 
asm, and compares these Archives first with the 
Ocean, and then, moderating a little, with the Adri- 
atic ; but in the end, soaring beyond all bounds, he 
inquires whether the Venetian Archives could not 
on their surface, give standing room to the entire hu- 
man race ! In some fantastic tale of Hoffmann's with 
a Keeper of Public Documents as the hero, this fan- 
ciful calculation would have the credit of an original 
invention ; but in a geographical writer, whose first 
duty is accuracy, it becomes childish paradox. Let 
us come to the facts : following the most moderate and 
sober calculations, we may say that the Archives of 
Venice are distributed in 264 rooms ; that in the 
division anterior to 1797 there are 121 archives, 
comprehending 100,752 portfolios and registers ; 
and in the modern division 110 other archives con- 
taining 102,462 portfolios and registers ; that finally, 
of separate documents on sheets of parchment, the 
number is ascertained to be 52,878. Here are trust- 
worthy, and assuredly sufficient, figures. 



61 VENICE. 

We have said that to find one's way about the 
building is no easy matter. The entanglement of 
the rooms, in spite of their being numbered, is in 
truth so intricate as almost to necessitate a compass ; 
and it would be very difficult to describe systemat- 
ically the interior arrangements. There are some 
rooms which are no larger than an ordinary draw- 
ing-room, and there are others, such as the two 
ancient refectories of the convent, which are large 
enough to have held as many as 1800 monks on cer- 
tain ecclesiastical occasions ; others, again, have the 
full length of the nave of a great church. There 
are shelves ranged all along the walls, and on these 
shelves registers and bundles carefully docketed. 
Inscriptions in white on a blue ground indicate the 
most important classes. On getting to the first story 
by the grand staircase built against the back of the 
ancient refectories, we arrive at the largest halls, 
which are in the form of a Latin cross. This is the 
part of the building which contains the choicest of 
the ancient documents. Here are chronologically 
arranged all the papers relating to taxes, title-deeds, 
civil and criminal cases, and papers concerning 
finance, the mint, the public health, the arsenal, 
war, sumptuary legislation, maritime possessions, 
navigation, public instruction, orders of nobility, 
commerce, the arts, trades, and liberal professions, 
the departments charged Avith the inspection of 
monasteries and public services, the ordinary police 



TEE ARCHIVES. 65 

(under the picturesque name of '' Signori della Notte 
al Civile e al Criminale "), waters, forests, mines, 
State loans, communal properties, and a multitude of 
other Uffi^i or offices, ramifications of these different 
great departments. ^ 

Turning south, we come to a lofty and beautiful 
chamber, which used to be the library of the monks, 
but is now set apart, under the name of '' Mani- 
morte " for the collections of the acts of the confra- 
ternities and convents ; eight of the upper rooms in 
succession are reserved for the same subjects. At 
the far end of this magnificent room, a large window 
opens on the little Campo di San Rocco, and from it 
can be seen the admirable facade of that well-known 
and frequented monument, the Scuola di San Rocco. 

On leaving the '' Mani-morte," if we retrace our 
steps we reach the long space which is partly de- 
voted to the collection of the Ducal Chancery. On 
the right of this two small Roman doors are to be 
noticed. One of these leads to the collection of the 
Secret Chancery, the other to that of the Council of 
Ten. These two low doors in the great sides of the 
Ducal Chancery, each opening into a suite of eight 
chambers, among which two of the largest belong to 
the department of the Inquisitors, represent alto- 
gether what one may well call the body and soul of 
the polity of ancient Venice. Chroniclers, pub- 
licists, political historians, historians of manners, 
diplomatists^ negotiators, lawyers, and the merely 



66 VENICE. 

curious, may all find here ^Yhat they seek. The 
ground here to be cultivated is rich and fruitful enough 
to admit of all reaping from it the rarest products. 

Since the decree of December 13, 1815, order- 
ing the general concentration of the archives in one 
building, they have been under the charge of six 
successive directors. The first of these was Jacopo 
Chiodo, of whom it is said that he was bom in and 
lived for papers. He had in fact served the Most 
Serene Republic under the last two of her doges, 
first as coadjutor to the Chancery, and then as 
keeper of the archives to the Senate ; afterward 
charged with a division of the archives, of which 
Count Marini had been principal director under the 
Italian government, he was in his turn appointed di- 
rector in 1815 ; presided at the general installation 
at the Frari in 1822 ; and remained in this position, 
one well suited to his powers and tastes, until 1840. 
Signer Ninfa Priuli succeeded him, and continued in 
charge for seven years. He did little, or rather 
nothing at all. He was a man of no special parts or 
zeal. Then came the Cavaliere Mutinelli, appointed 
in 1847 ; during his administration there occurred 
the revolution of 1848 ; but he was not dismissed 
under the government of Manin, and when the Aus- 
trians returned to power, he still remained in favor. 

Signer Mutinelli was a distinguished man of let- 
ters ; he had a quick and vivacious mind, and un- 
dertook various reforms in the great establishment 



THE ARCHIVES. 67 

committed to his care. He was not a liberal in 
politics^ and had many and bitter enemies in Venice. 
Still he knew how to stand out against the storm 
with which the Viennese government threatened 
the archives in 1852. Vienna in fact secretly 
coveted the possession of the most precious part of 
the State papers of the extinct Eepublic ; and in- 
tended nothing less than to plunder the whole Secret 
Chancery of ancient Venice, all the despatches, all 
the reports, all the diplomatic element which was 
one of the historic glories of the famous State. As 
soon as he was warned of this well-laid plot in the 
regions of imperial power, Signer Mutinelli, devoted 
though he was to the Austrian government, ad- 
dressed a statement to the sovereign so forcibly 
reasoned that the Emperor's hand was stayed on the 
very eve of signing the fatal decree. We must, 
then, do Signer Mutinelli the justice to remember 
that it was he who saved for Venice the most de- 
lightful, interesting, and honorable part of her docu- 
mentary treasures. It was during the later years of 
his administration that his immense depository be- 
gan to be more easy of access to the studious visitor. 
Up to that time admissions to consult these papers 
were so rare that it would have been easy to name 
and count them. The Cavaliere Mutinelli retired in 
1861, and was succeeded by Count Dandolo. It is 
from his appointment that we must date the liberal 
era of the archives ; there was little more closing of 



68 VENICE. 

doors thereafter. Even the secrets of the Council 
of Ten were accessible. But the venerable Count, 
less fortunate than his predecessor, had during his 
administration to sustain the rudest shock that can 
be given to the head of a great establishment. 
Upon him fell the lamentable duty of having to 
record in his protocols the famous depredations 
ordered by Austria, and carried out with the strong 
arm, in this edifice intended only for quiet study 
and patient research. A benedictine monk named 
Beda Dudik^ with a lieutenant who had made him- 
self his paladin, had orders to see the spoliation 
accomplished. The struggle between the invaders 
and directors lasted two days. But armed force was 
called in, and against might the unfortunate Count 
had nothing to oppose but right ; and on such occa- 
sions the power of right, however excellent from an 
abstract point of view, is of little avail to check or 
throw an adversary. And in this case the spoiler 
took away 1336 registers and portfolios from among 
those most valuable and necessary for the historical 
study of Venice, and 1000 tariffs, commercial treaties 
and the like ; this happened on the 22d and 23d 
of July 1866. This is the spoil which Austria 
agreed to restore by the 18th article in the Vienna 
treaty of the 3d of October. The article was duly 
carried out. 

Count Dandolo was succeeded as director of the 
Archives by M. Tommaseo Gar, a name respected 



THE AKCHIVES. 69 

and loved by every one, whose valuable writings, 
accomplished scholarship, and well-proved powers 
of administration, naturally pointed him out for this 
coveted position. After him came the Cavaliere 
Toderini, who died recently, and was succeeded by 
Signor Bartolommeo Cecchetti, the learned author 
of various careful and valuable historical memoirs. 
It must not be supposed that such a prodigious 
number of documents could serve to illustrate local 
history alone. The reports (rela^ioni) of the Vene- 
tian ambassadors are true political monuments. 
They supply an inexhaustible source from which the 
students of European history in general have drawn 
and will continue to draw. The whole drift of 
modern historical work is toward researches of this 
kind ; history is coming to be more and more written 
from authentic records or contemporary documents ; 
and no more fruitful source can be consulted by the 
scholar than that which we have just described. It 
is just to add that nowhere will he find custodians 
more eager to facilitate his studies, or be put upon 
the right track with more inexhaustible and disin- 
terested kindness. 



CHAPTER IIL 

THE COMMERCE OF THE VENETIANS-THEIR NAVI- 
GATION. 

Even from the first, the Venetians gave so wide 
an extension to commerce^ and the spirit of exchange 
was always so strong w^ithin them, that if the Serene 
Republic has played an important part in the world, 
the fact is chiefly due to the Avealth created by her 
trade. Her maritime genius was the precious fruit 
of necessity. The Venetians took refuge in the in- 
accessible islands of the lagoon to escape from the 
barbarians who were ravaging Italy ; and from the 
very precariousness and isolation of their position, 
turned to account with unequalled prudence and 
subtlety and inspired by a spirit of adventure 
which never flagged, sprang up this rapidly-acquired 
prosperity, which had attained its greatest height at 
an epoch when most other nations of Europe were 
yet but gropers on the path of progress, and knew 
no other boundaries but those of their own frontiers. 

I shall sketch rapidly, following Carlo Antonio 
Marin and Fabio Mutinelli, the main outlines of the 
history of Venetian commerce and navigation. 

In the fourth century of our era^ the Gothic King 

70 



COMMERCIAL HISTORY. 71 

Theodoric reigned at Ravenna. The aim of his 
policy was to consolidate his power^ to civilize his 
people, and to obliterate all traces of the invasions 
and disorders attending the fall of the Roman 
Empire. Already established in their refuge amid 
the lagoons, the fisher people who were to be the 
founders of Venice made themselves useful and 
even indispensable to the conquerors, who had 
neither ships nor salt, and who had tt) beg them of 
the founders of Venice, by the voice of Cassiodorus, 
senator and commander of the guard to Theodoric. 
Here are the words in which Cassiodorus addressed 
the tribunes who were the magistrates of the new- 
born Republic : ^^ We can live without gold, but not 
without salt." The salt-beds of the coast accord- 
ingly served to supply the wants of the barbarians ; 
by means of their flat-bottomed boats the Venetians 
skimmed the surface of the lagoon, made their way 
up the rivers, and appeared in the midst of the 
Gothic towns. They brought them also olives and 
wine from the coasts of Istria. Thus they laid the 
foundation of their nascent industry. 

They were quick to understand the great advan- 
tages to be derived from these natural salt-beds of 
their lagoons, and from those which might be arti- 
ficially established along the neighboring coasts. 
They began therefore by perfecting the art of ex- 
tracting salt, signed treaties of commerce with their 
neighbors, bought from them the right of trading in 



72 VENICE. 

this product of their shores^ and either by way of 
the Adriatic, or by the rivers which empty them- 
selves into the basin of the lagoons, found an easy 
means of transport, which enabled them to provision 
Italy and the coasts of the Levant at a lower price 
than any other producers. These salt-beds of the 
lagoons furnished in considerable quantities the salt 
known by the name of Chioggia salt. They im- 
proved the beds of Cervia,^ which belonged to the 
Bolognese, started the excavations of Istria and 
Dalmatia, and extended their works to Sicily, to the 
shores of Africa, and even to those of the Black 
Sea. 

These relations once established, the Venetians 
founded regular establishments, managed and regu- 
lated like our fisheries, in the different places where 
this work of extracting salt was carried on. Little 
by little obtaining for themselves a complete 
monopoly of the trade, they penetrated as far as 
the interior of Croatia, and into central Germany, 
to extract the fossil salts. By advantageous con- 
tracts, and more often by underselling all other com- 
petitors, they secured the supply of the whole of 
north Italy, and in the exercise of a rather arbitrary 
authority, closed their port and even the entrance 
to the Adriatic against all competitors. Thence 
arose the palpable necessity of supporting their 
claims by force, and, as an immediate result, the 
necessity of increasing their war navy. 



COMMERCIAL HISTORY. 73 

The Republic never ceased to regard this branch 
of trade as one of its most vital resources^ and the 
great merchants of later days introduced into the 
most solemn treaties in the history of Venice purely 
commercial clauses, stipulating that they should 
supply the conquered State with salt. To show how 
far in advance of other nations the Venetians were 
in perception of their own interest, and in the spirit 
of commerce — in 1516, on the day after Marignan, 
when Pope Leo X. deprived the Venetians, then his 
own allies, of the commission to furnish salt to the 
whole duchy of Milan, and took it for himself to- 
gether with those great salt-works of Cervia which 
had at an earlier period been ceded by the Bolognese 
to the Republic, — that Republic had already been in 
possession of this right for more than seven cen- 
turies. This throws the signing of the first treaty 
as far back as the eighth century. 

Out of the necessity of administering these great 
properties, the source of such important revenues, 
grew the creation of a special magistracy, that of 
the '' provveditori al sale." They were so jealous 
of these rights at Venice, that the Senate made laws 
forbidding the use of foreign salt throughout tlie 
territory of the Republic. Any infraction of these 
laws was punished by perpetual banishment, and the 
house of the culprit was razed to the ground. The 
public store-houses of salt were very numerous in 
Venice ; the principal one opened into the ware- 



74 VENICE. 

houses of the Dogana or Custom House, which face 
the entrances of the Giudecca CanaL 

As early as the year 450, incredible as it may 
appear, the spirit of policy showed itself in the 
Venetians ; their prudence coupled with duplicity 
prompted them, while serving the Goths and de- 
riving immense advantages from transactions with 
them, not to neglect the Greeks of the Byzantine 
Empire, who were soon to come to Italy to fight the 
barbarians. The Venetians became the auxiliaries 
of the Greek generals Belisarius and the eunuch 
Narses ; when the latter arrived at Aquileia there 
was but one way left open for him by which to reach 
the enemy, who barred the road to Italy on the 
Lisonzo ; and that way led through the marshes and 
lagoons. Narses had to ask the Venetians to escort 
the imperial troops under the walls of that same 
Eavenna, which but yesterday bought its salt of 
them. The rendering of this service opened the 
gates of Constantinople to the commerce of Venice; 
and immediately commercial treaties and contracts 
of exchange were signed between Venice and the 
Eastern empire. 

Narses, a traitor to his country, invited the Lom- 
bards to that part of Italy which he had conquered ; 
they came from the remotest parts of their wild 
,home in Pannonia, and fell upon Ravenna; but 
they brought with them two terrible scourges, 
plague and famine. These two scourges, making 



COMMEKCIAL HISTORY. 75 

one vast cemetery of the vanquished country, turned 
nevertheless to the profit of the Venetians, who con- 
veyed flocks and supplies for the famished Lombards 
from Apulia at the other end of the Adriatic. In 
exchange^ the tribunes demanded for the Venetians 
security^ protection, and exemption from all dues 
throughout the whole kingdom of Lombardy ; they 
obtained permission to build houses, caravanserais, 
or fondachi^ for their travellers and merchants, to 
establish and supply permanent markets on the 
coasts, where the inhabitants and subject populations 
should come and buy Venetian salt, foreign grain, 
and ordinary merchandise. 

At the end of the eighth century, the Emperor 
Charlemagne, king of the Franks, takes possession 
of Lombardy. It is now no longer the dull race of 
Pannonia who reign at Eavenna, but the subtle 
Franks, the lovers of pleasure and luxury. The 
Venetians soon perceive the advantage they can 
draw from this circumstance, and, already masters 
of the commerce of the East, the home of splendor 
and opulence, they bring rich tissues, perfumes, 
carpets, purple and silk, peacock feathers, ivory, 
ebony, pearls and gems, to tempt the conquerors. 
They establish an annual fair at Pavia, which soon 
acquires the fame that has belonged in later days to 
that of Nijni, Sinigaglia or Beaucaire. In 989, the 
great Carlovingian succession having expired, tlic 
power of the Saxon Otho succeeded to that of the 



76 VENICE. 

Lombards and Franks in Italy. Pietro Orseolo, at 
this time Doge of Venice^ wishing to develop still 
further the commerce and resources of the Eepublic, 
sent an ambassador to Otho, who received him at 
Miilhausen, and confirmed the Venetians in all the 
privileges which had been previously accorded to 
them by the Goths, the Lombards, and the Franks 
in turn ; he abolished all taxes, fines, and tributes. 
But this was not enough ; the Emperor Otho con- 
ceded still more, and gave the Venetians a port and 
market very advantageously situated for access from 
Germany by way of the northern provinces of 
Belluno and the Trevisan. Hitherto, the Venetians 
had but had their genius ; henceforth they had 
wealth and power ; and every patriotic German 
sovereign continued to find advantage for his own 
people in granting privileges to the city of the 
lagoons. 

This same Doge Orseolo, at the beginning of the 
eleventh century, obtained new rights for the Vene- 
tian shipping from Basil 11. and Constantino VIIL, 
Emperors of the East ; and at the same time de- 
manded of these sovereigns confirmation of the ex- 
isting treaties of commerce with Constantinople, and 
with all the ports of Greece, Thrace, Cyprus, and 
Crete. The better to secure the good graces of the 
Eastern court, the Doge in his turn led the galleys 
of the Republic in person to the assistance of the 
imperial fleet before Bari, which was being besieged 



Panorama of Venice from the Campanik 



COMMERCIAL HISTORY. 77 

by the Saracens^ at this time masters of Apulia. 
The combined forces succeeded in raising the siege : 
and this important service drew still closer the bonds 
between the two powers. 

But though they had thus contracted commercial 
alliances and signed innumerable treaties^ the Vene- 
tians, shut up as they were in their lagoon, and 
possessing only a few leagues of dry land, ex- 
perienced the greatest difficulty in procuring wood 
for building. Accordingly they took advantage of 
the arrival of the Normans in the Adriatic to embark 
on an enterprise which was destined to bring them 
full possession of Istria, Dalmatia, and the ancient 
Albania, regions at that time abounding in forest, 
though now cruelly despoiled of all vegetation. The 
Greek Emperor saw Durazzo besieged by the Nor- 
mans, and found himself powerless to defend it ; 
Venice came to the rescue and delivered Alexis 
Comnenus, who after that set no further bounds to 
the mercantile liberties of the Venetians, and even 
authorized them to found counting-houses and fond- 
achi at Durazzo ; he also levied a rate from the 
Greek empire toward the support of the church of 
Venice, and went so far as to compel the people of 
Amalfi, who had been the allies of the Eoman pirates, 
to pay a large annual contribution to the Basilica of 
St. Mark. But this was not enough ; the Venetians 
had a more important object. The Eastern emperors 
advanced a claim upon Dalmatia, and the Venetians, 



78 VKNICE. 

wlio liad just taken possession of that region, did 
not enjov their rights without opposition. The Doge 
\it'd\ Faliero sent a sohMun embassy to demand that 
the Kastern empire shouhl abanih)n its pretensions 
to these cokmies. The empire was at this time a 
prey to dissensions and usurpations ; and Alexis 
Connienus, remembering with gratitude the help he 
had reeeived beibre Hari, eeded to the \ enetians all 
his rights over Istria and Dalmatia (1084). The 
ctiect of this aet was to open up the forests to them, 
and put it into their power to construet those 
mighty fleets, whieh, put into action by the great 
commercial wealth they had acquired, were to render 
the Venetians masters of the Adriatic. 

We now reaeli tlie moment wlien the Italian popu- 
lations begin to claim their liberty. It is the epoch 
of the famous Lombard league, and of the internal 
quarrels of the Italian towns, each in arms against 
its neighbor. The commerce between Italy and 
Venice languishes, but ^ eniee had a wide iield, and 
every time one of the towns, having deehvred war 
against its neighbor, seeks the help of Venice, she 
makes them pay for this help by an advantageous 
commercial treaty. .\n innnense enterprise, destined 
to change the face of the world, and forming one of 
the turning-points of human history, was about to 
give the Venetians another opportunity of displaying 
their prodigious resources. Peter the Hermit 
preached his crusade against the Turks, who had 



COMMERCIAL HISTORY. 79 

already taken possession of Mesopotamia, Palestine, 
Syria, and Nicsea, where Soliman had established 
the seat of his empire. Constantinople was not yet 
in danger, but the East was threatened. Venice did 
not hesitate ; was it religious zeal only which urged 
her on ? — no, it was also the love of gain, the com- 
mercial instinct, the boundless ambition of this 
former settlement of fishermen. They armed two 
hundred galleys, commanded by Giovanni son of 
Vitale Micheli, and went to the help of the 
Crusaders. At the time of the fourth Crusade 
they were at the very zenith of their wealth and 
glory. 

The French had no fleet large enough to carry 
their army to the East ; they therefore addressed 
themselves to the Venetians, who contracted to 
undertake the transport for the sum of eighty million 
gold marks. In vain the French commanders sell 
their lands, and melt their plate and treasure ; they 
are still thirty million marks short. Then the 
Senate proposes a singular compact. Lara, the 
capital of Dalmatia, was in revolt against Venice. 
It was agreed the French should help to reduce the 
rebel city, and, not being able to acquit themselves 
of their debt with gold, should pay it with their 
blood, and in this way fulfil the contract by which 
they were to be permitted to deliver the Holy 
Sepulchre. But before proceeding to their final 
task, they were tempted by the Senate into a new 



80 VENICE. 

enterprise which nearly brought upon them the ex- 
communication of the Pope ; — namely, the attack 
of Constantinople, their ally of yesterday, where 
the Emperor Alexis, son of Angelus Isaac, had been 
dethroned by his brother. It was the Doge Enrico 
Dandolo who had perceived the gain that might 
accrue to Venice from this enterprise. And in fact, 
the capital of the Greek empire once taken, there 
was no question of restoring the deposed sovereign ; 
the throne was handed over to Baldwin ; and the 
Venetians, who were not anxious to take over an 
empty sovereignty subject to so many accidents, and 
always threatened by the Turks, labored to secure 
for themselves only such imprescriptible advan- 
tages as would give them facilities for trading in all 
parts of the world. They had already rights over 
one part of the empire ; now they possessed them- 
selves of a half of Constantinople itself; they made 
themselves masters of all the islands of the Archi- 
pelago, and numerous ports in the Hellespont and in 
the Morea ; they bought the island of Candia from 
the Marquis of Montferrat for a million gold marks ; 
without drawing the sword Marco Dandolo and 
Jacopo Veniero took the city and territory of 
Gallipoli ; Andrea and Girolamo Gisi seized Tenos, 
Mycon, Syra, and Scopolo ; Rabano Carcerio took 
Negropont ; Pisani triumphed at Pio, Quirini at 
Stampolia, Veniero at Paros, Navagero at Lemnos, 
and finally Marco Sanuto entered Naxos^ adding 



COMMEKCIAL HISTOKY. 81 

later to his conquests Antlparos^ Santoriiij Sisante, 
and Policandros. 

The Venetians were now to put the crown upon 
their power bj undertaking commerce with India 
through the Tartars. Samarcand was the great 
depot of merchandise in the East ; thence by way 
of the Caspian goods reached the mouths of the 
Volga ; from the Volga they were transported to 
the Don ; the Venetians having there established a 
commercial settlement which afterward became very 
famous at La Tana (now Azof), they increased it 
by degrees till it became a very wealthy and impor- 
tant fortified colony, protected by the interests both 
of the Tartars and of its founders. From this time 
forth Venice may increase her glory, but she will 
never increase her wealth ; she has laid the founda- 
tions of a prosperity destined to endure for seven 
centuries, and in proportion to the narrowness of 
her territory, unequalled in the world. France, as 
we have seen, already begged ships of Venice at 
the time of the Crusades ; in the sixteenth century 
we shall find her negotiating loans from the Senate. 
The Venice of those days can be compared in wealth 
— relatively, of course to the difference of times and 
conditions — only to England, supported by her In- 
dian colonies with their hundred and eighty millions 
of English and native subjects, and with mighty em- 
pires subject to her dominion. 

From the thirteenth century Venice had so in- 
6 



82 VENICE. 

creased her commerce^ and had made such number- 
less treaties with the populations of Europe and Asia, 
that at certain periods her quays were filled with 
strangers, attracted by exchange and trade, and pro- 
vided for by commercial friends who showed them 
hospitality. The Senate, full of anxiety to develop 
everything that tended to the glory or riches of 
Venice, thought to facilitate the sojourn of all these 
strangers by founding for them fondachi, a kind of 
caravanserais where they might be lodged gratui- 
tously on reporting themselves to certain magistrates 
whose duty it was to establish their identity and 
station. The Germans were the first to have their 
Fondaco, situated on the Rialto itself; it has been 
rebuilt several times, and unfortunately nothing now 
remains to be seen of it but an architectural mass 
without special character, and of purely modern 
appearance. 

Three nobles, with the title of Vis Domini, pre- 
sided over the administration of establishments of 
this kind ; there was a public weigher who took note 
of the weights and nature of the merchandise, and 
was employed in sorting and storing it in the ware- 
houses attached to the fondaco. It will be seen that 
this was on the same principle as our docks, with 
the difi'erence, that the owners of the cargo were 
lodged in the building itself at the expense of the 
State. Below the weigher was the fonticaio^ or 
keeper of the building. In this same thirteenth 



COMMERCIAL HISTORY, 83 

century the Armenians were also favored by the 
government ; and a certain Marco Ziani^ a nephew 
of the Doge Sebastian^ who had a strong affection 
for them because his family had lived for a long 
time in Armenia, bequeathed them his palace, that 
known as the palace of the Ziani in the street of 
San Giuliano. 

The Moors also had their Fondaco, close to the 
Madonna del Orto, at the Campo dei Mori, where a 
number of houses may yet be seen ornamented with 
sculptures of camels bearing merchandise, and figures 
in Moorish costume. 

In the seventeenth century the Turks received for 
their share that superb palace on the Grand Canal 
which still bears the name of Fondaco dei Turchi, 
which the city has lately restored and appropriated 
to civic use as the Correr Museum. This palace is 
one of the oldest and most remarkable in Venice, 
and must be about contemporary with the Ducal 
Palace and the fagade of St. Mark. It faces the 
lagoon, and was the property of the Duke of 
Ferrara. But long before the seventeenth century, 
so early as the fourteenth, the State had provided 
for the Turks in the street called Canareggio, and 
afterward in that of San Giovanni e Paolo, near the 
statue of Colleoni, one of the most beautiful local- 
ities in Venice, where stands the wonderful church 
of San Giovanni e Paolo. But it must not be for- 
gotten that these Turks, so useful from a commercial 



84 VENICE. 

point of view, were infidels ; therefore the windows 
of their Fondaco were ordered to be walled up, the 
rooms were lighted from an interior court, the build- 
ing was enclosed by a wall, and two corner towers, 
which might have served as a defence, were thrown 
down. A Catholic warder was appointed, who closed 
the doors at sunset. Women and children were not 
permitted to cross the threshold, powder and arms 
were deposited in a safe place in front of the en- 
trance ; and to complete this series of restrictions, 
it was forbidden to lodge an Ottoman in the town. 

The Tuscans, who, as every one knows, were 
great merchants, and had become very wealthy by 
means of banks and counting-houses, had their 
Fondaco on the Eialto ; and the people of Lucca 
had theirs at the Via Bissa, in the part of the town 
which lies between the Eialto and San Giovanni 
Crisostomo. 

The Grreeks and Syrians were so numerous, and 
on such good terms with the Venetians, that they 
lived in all parts of the town. As for the Jews, they 
had been the objects of innumerable regulations ; 
but they could not be excluded because of their 
peculiar aptitude for trade. As early as the sixth 
century, they had claimed the monopoly of money- 
changing, and most princes who knew their own in- 
terests, protected and encouraged them to live in 
their cities. In the thirteenth century the Lombards 
and the Florentines had in their turn succeeded in 



COMMERCIAL HISTORY. 85 

getting the monopoly of large transactions ; envy 
arose against those who were amassing and preserv- 
ing such immense wealth ; and the spirit of the 
Crusades^ in awaking Christian feeling^ also excited 
public animosity against the race. Still Venice re- 
mained open to them, a privilege they used^ and no 
doubt abused, for they were soon forced to take 
refuge at Mestre, a little place which in our day is 
the meeting-point of the railroads which converge 
at Venice from north and south. Banks in the 
proper sense of the word did not yet exist ; pawn- 
brokers were unknown, consequently the Senate after 
a time readmitted the Jews to the city with a view to 
developing petty as well as wholesale commercial 
interests, and of encouraging business generally. 
The time of their sojourn was limited, so that the 
privilege should not have a definite character, and 
they were forced to wear a distinctive badge in the 
shape of a small piece of yellow material sewn on 
the front of the dress, for which later a yellow cap 
was substituted, and later again a cap covered on 
the top with red. They were forbidden to buy 
houses, lands, or real property, or to enter the liberal 
professions^ except indeed that of medicine. If a 
Jew was convicted of misconduct with a woman of 
the Eialto, he was fined 500 lire and imprisoned 
for six months ; and in other cases he might be 
imprisoned for an entire year. Cruel to these men, 
whom they nevertheless sought out for their pro- 



86 VENICE. 

verbial intelligence^ and by whose abilities they 
profited, the Senate assigned them, as at RomOj a 
special district to live in, the Corte delle Galli, be- 
tween the streets of San Grirolarao and San Greremia ; 
they gave it also the customary name of Ghetto. 
The Jews were made to pay dear even for this 
unhealthy abode, and a walled enclosure was built 
round it, to separate them from other citizens ; they 
were in the identical position of the Jews of Morocco 
in our OAvn day ; constrained to close their doors 
from sunset to sunrise, and with two Catholic 
warders, paid out of their own money, charged to 
keep watch over the place. On holidays they were 
strictly forbidden to go out. Two armed galleys 
guarded their outlets to the sea. They could not 
attend a synagogue in Venice, for no place of wor- 
ship was allowed them within the city ; they were 
obliged to go to Mestre for this purpose ; and for 
their burial-place they were grudgingly conceded a 
desolate strip of the sea-beach. 

But we are not now concerned with the position 
of the Jews in Venice, only with their commercial 
relations toward the people of the Republic ; let 
us therefore return to the fondachi, or residences 
granted by the State to the representatives of foreign 
trade. 

Two fondachi have become famous and still exist 
at Venice ; that of the Turks aforesaid, and that 
appropriated to the use of the Germans. The Fon- 



COMMERCIAL HISTORY. 87 

daco dei Turchi stands to this day on the Grand 
Canal at San Giacomo delP Orio. 

Travellers who visited Venice thirty years ago 
must have remarked, in passing down the Grand Ca- 
nalj this ancient building with its open loggia on the 
upper story ornamented with marble columns having 
Byzantine capitals. The antique facade^ set with 
slabs of Greek marble^ and encrusted with circular 
escutcheons^ was falling into ruin, and earth and 
moss were choking the interstices. The Turkish 
custodian still lived there, and might bo seen leaning 
sadly and silently against the last arch of the loggia, 
with Eastern immobility, indifferent to the gondolas 
passing and re-passing under his eyes, looking, but 
seeing nothing. A poet unacquainted with that 
placidity of the Oriental, which looks like dreaming 
and is yet so dreamless, might have imagined that 
he read a look of wistfulness in this man's eyes, and 
that the forlorn warder was thinking of other days, 
and of the ancient glory of Venice. This building, 
known by the name of Fondaco dei Turchi, was 
built in the thirteenth century by the family of the 
Palmieri of Pesaro. Pietro Pesaro, the last ambas- 
sador of the Venetian Republic at Rome, and the 
last of his name, could not bear to see the downfall 
of his country, and died in exile. The Pesaro were 
not always masters of this building. In 1331 it was 
bought by the Republic, and given to the Marquises 
of Este^ Lords of Briare, who afterward became 



88 VENICE. 

Dukes of Este^ when they gave splendid entertain- 
ments in this building, at which Ariosto and Tasso 
were sometimes present. 

Pope Clement VIII. took possession of the beau- 
tiful domains of the Dukes of Ferrara, and gave 
them to his nephew Cardinal Aldobrandini, who in 
1618 sold them to Antonio Priuli, Doge of Venice. 
The Republic, seeking a favorable locality for the 
sale of Turkish merchandise, hired Antonio Priuli's 
palace from hinij which thus became the residence 
of the Turks and the depot of their merchandise. 
Extremely severe laws regulated this establishment. 
By and by the Fondaco came back into the hands 
of the Pesaro, Maria Priuli having brought it as a 
marriage portion to her husband Leonardo Pesaro, 
Procurator of St. Mark's. The last descendant of 
the Pesaro bequeathed the Fondaco dei Turchi to 
the Count Leonardo Marini, his nephew, who sold it 
in 1828 to a merchant, and he in his turn in 1859 
ceded it to the city of Venice, which remains in 
possession. Count Sagredo, a Senator of the present 
day, was the first in our time to interest himself in 
this palace. He has written an excellent monograph 
upon it, in which the portions relating to art were 
treated by the skilful architect Frederic Berchet, 
who with great care and true feeling prepared a plan 
for restoring the structure. The commission, under 
the direction of first Count Alessandro Marcello, and 
then of Count Luigi Benito, welcomed the proposal j 



COMMERCIAL HISTORY. 89 

Count Benito began the execution of it, which was 
carried on with precision and promptitude. Besides 
the Chevalier Berchet, who made a name for him- 
self by this undertaking^ we ought to mention the 
practical superintendent of the works^ Sebastien 
Cadet, and the sculptor of the carvings, Jacopo 
Spura, who has been able to restore the ancient 
marbles without losing the character of their original 
workmanship. After so many vicissitudes, this 
ancient building, so judiciously restored, remains 
finally the Museum of Venice. 

The Fondaco dei Tedeschi (of the Germans) has 
been so disfigured by successive restorations that it 
is necessary to consult history, as well as to make 
an effbrt of the imagination, before one can bring 
oneself to pay any attention to this large and mas- 
sive palace, without beauty or proportion, which 
rises on the left of the Rialto as one comes from the 
railway. Tradition says that at the beginning of 
the sixteenth century its exterior walls were splen- 
didly decorated with frescoes, the work of Giorgione 
and Titian. This is the first time we hear of Gior- 
gione as the decorator of the exterior walls of a 
palace ; but as the Senate, d^ordine pubblico^ had de- 
cided on the decoration of the Fondaco, it is quite 
certain that they would have employed the famous 
Barbarelli (Giorgione), that great poet in form and 
color. It would be interesting to look among the 
records left by the officials concerned, in the 



90 VENICE. 

Archives of the Frari, for the financial accounts of 
the Fondaco^ which should certainly be there ; we 
should then know whether these great potentates 
and politicians were really able to employ the genius 
of Giorgione for this work. But without searching 
the archives, we may accept the assertions of great 
writers and specialists in things Venetian, who speak 
of having still in their time seen this splendid decora- 
tion, defaced and ruined indeed, but still showing 
indubitable marks of the master's genius. Selvatico 
has left a notice of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi ; he 
attributes this building to Fra Giocondo, the famous 
Dominican who built the Consular Palace at Verona, 
and the Chateau de Gaillon in Normandy, one facade 
of which has been transported to the court of the 
Ecole des Beaux- Arts in Paris. It seems that the 
Fondaco had existed from time immemorial on its 
present site ; and when, in 1540, an extensive fire 
destroyed the building, the Senate, eager to show its 
interest in the cause of commerce, and in particular 
of a nation with which the commercial relations of 
the Eepublic had been so close for centuries, decreed 
that a new building of regular style should be raised 
upon the site of the old. But, if Selvatico asserts 
that Fra Giocondo was the architect chosen by the 
Signory, others say that it was Girolamo Tedesco 
who received the order. After a description of the 
building and its position on the Grand Canal, with 
its entrance to the sea, and its stairs by the water- 



Correr Museum : Ancient Fondacho dei Turchi 



COMMERCIAL HISTORY. 91 

side for the unlading of merchandise^ Selvatico ex- 
presses himself in words which leave no doubt as to 
the richness of the decoration. '' The profile of the 
windows is poor^ but they are disposed symmetri- 
cally enough to produce a simple and noble effect ; 
and in truth they needed no further ornament^ since 
all the plain parts of the walls were covered with 
splendid frescoes by Giorgione and Titian, frescoes 
which have been almost entirely destroyed by the 
hand of man and the agency of time together. At 
the two angles of the fagade overlooking the canal, 
there stood at one time two towers, on which might 
be read two important inscriptions. But a few years 
ago, when the building was restored, the two towers 
were overthrown, the inscriptions effaced, and what 
is still more irreparable, two magnificent figures by 
Giorgione which might be regarded as the best pre- 
served of all, were destroyed.'^ 

There is therefore no doubt that the most famous 
artists of the Eenaissance helped to decorate public 
buildings of a civil or commercial character with ex- 
terior frescoes. This shows the immense importance 
which the Signory of Venice attached to commerce, 
and gives the highest idea of the magnificence of the 
time, and the intelligence of the counsellors of the 
government. 

It is, however, difficult for us to form any idea of 
the splendor of these merchants of Florence and 
Venice. I find in Mutinelli the following lines, 



92 VENICE. 

which are well calculated to set the lovers of art 
dreaming : 

'' When the news of the victory of Lepanto 
reached Venice, the Germans Avere the first who 
wished to celebrate it by a splendid illumination in 
their Fondaco on the Rialto. All the other mer- 
chants followed this example ; and those who most 
distinguished themselves were the Jewellers^ the 
Tuscans, and the Mercers. The well-known portico 
of the RialtOj where the drapers' shops are, was en- 
tirely hung with turquoise blue fabrics spangled 
with gold and lined with scarlet. Each shop had its 
decoration ; there were panoplies of oriental arms 
taken from the Turks, and in the midst of these 
trophies were to be seen pictures by Giovanni Bel- 
lini, Giorgione, Sebastian del Piombo, Titian and 
Pordenone. At the entrance of the bridge, an arch 
was raised on which the arms of the allied powers 
were represented quartered on the same scutcheon. 
Banners and festoons hung from every arch and 
every window ; torches and silver candelabra placed 
on every projection illuminated the streets, and 
turned the night into a bright and splendid day.'^ 

And to show still further what luxury these power- 
ful goldsmiths displayed, here is a passage from a 
MS. in the library of St. Mark, entitled Chronicle of 
Venice — Hoiv the City ivas Built : 

" Thursday was the festival day of the Doge, 
Thomas Mocenigo 5 great stands were raised in tiers 



COMMERCIAL HISTORY. 93 

on St. Mark's Place for the women. The goldsmiths 
placed two silver helmets in the midst^ with their 
enamelled plumes which cost a hundred ducats 
apiece. Then came a procession of three hundred 
and fifty goldsmiths, dressed in scarlet and mounted 
on richly-caparisoned horses (each harness costing 
three ducats) preceded by trumpeters and musicians^ 
who marched round the piazza in regular order. 
Then followed the companies of the Marquis of 
Ferrara and of the Lord of Mantua, the first com- 
posed of two hundred and the latter of two hundred 
and sixty horsemen ; it was a great consolation to 
behold so many coursers, so many devices and orna- 
ments and flags and streamers. The tournament 
lasted from seventeen o'clock (four) till twenty- two 
o'clock (nine), and it was a marvel to see so many 
gentle deeds. One of the silver caskets was pre- 
sented by the goldsmiths to a knight of the Marquis 
of Ferrara, and the other to the Lord of Mantua, 
and it was a great triumph to behold. On the 
Sunday following, the 28th of March, 1415, there 
was a joust, a noble sight to see, with all these lords 
and their companies and devices." 

At the time of the Renaissance, commercial rela- 
tions were destined to extend no further ; the most 
that remained to be done was to establish some 
counting-houses in the East, and to sign a few new 
treaties designed to consolidate those already exist- 
ing. The nobles had no longer the power of occupy- 



94 VENICE. 

ing themselves with commerce ; they were forbidden 
by strict decrees ; exchange was concentrated in the 
hands of a special body, a class which thus became 
enormously wealthy, and in calamitous times, when 
titles of nobility came to be put up for auction, 
bought them for handsome sums in hard cash. 

The fleet started from Venice every year under 
an escort of galleys, so as to escape the dangerous 
parts of the Adriatic which were infested by pirates, 
the famous Uscoques, whose haunt was in the 
Quarnero. The art of navigation was naturally 
developed with the habit of commerce, but to main- 
tain her claims to dominion over the Adriatic Sea, 
the Republic had to concentrate all her forces on the 
construction of ships, and to make of her arsenal 
one of the most prodigious maritime establishments 
of the world. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE AKSENAL OF VENICE. 

A NAVAL arsenal of formidable power and com- 
pletenessj considering the date of its creation^ was 
the natural outcome of that spirit of commerce and 
instinct for barter on which we have so much in- 
sisted. In it also the Venetians found the most 
powerful seconder of Venetian ambition ; they had 
chosen, as a practical matter, to conquer the sover- 
eignty of the Adriatic ; they were therefore bound 
to be in readiness at any moment to defend their 
claim, against all who might be tempted to dispute 
it, by help of a fleet powerful enough to make up 
for the weakness of their theoretic right. The 
Sieur de Saint-Didier, author of a volume called 
La Ville et la Repuhliqite de Venise^ and an eye- 
witness of all he narrates, declares that the arsenal 
properly represents the power of Venice ; that it 
was, in his day the admiration of all strangers, and 
" the foundation of the whole power of the State." 

The Turks, who were the constant and powerful 
enemies of the Republic, and often brought her with- 
in an inch of destruction, always looked with envious 
eyes on this establishment, then unrivalled in the 

95 



96 VENICE. 

world. When the Grand Viziers gave audience to 
the ambassadors of Venice^ they were never tired 
of asking for details concerning the organization, 
resources, and power of the arsenal. Strangers 
who visited the city hurried to the arsenal to admire 
both its wonderful order and its colossal extent ; it 
seemed to be the moral force of Venice in a palpable 
form, the symbol of her power and the source of 
her wealth. Here one could lay one's finger on the 
working springs of Venetian strength and realize 
the inexhaustible resources of a nation which 
founded its greatness on the construction and main- 
tenance of a fleet greatly out of proportion to its 
territory, and whose supremacy over the waters ex- 
tended to all the coasts of the Archipelago. 

We have seen that the Venetians were the first 
of all modern nations who understood the art of ship- 
building on a great scale ; as early as the time of the 
Crusades, as I have said, they undertook the trans- 
port of the French army ; and it was not enough 
that they should carry troops, they had also to 
defend them, and if necessary to provide a convoy. 
The heavy galleys had seventy-five feet of keel, 
and the light ones measured a hundred and thirty- 
five feet in length ; the vessels called coqueSj specially 
used for transport service, could carry up to a thou- 
sand men-at-arms with their stores ; the galeasses, 
w^hich were rowed like galleys, had their prows made 
cannon-proof; and were armed with fifty pieces of 



THE ARSENAL. 57 

artillery of the highest known calibre ; sixteen 
hundred soldiers could fight easily on board one of 
them. When such masses appeared on the scene of 
battle^ the effect of their attack was irresistible and 
decided the victory. For more than a century the 
rival nations were unable to procure means of action 
powerful enough to oppose these war- ships of the 
Venetians. But naturally^ the Genoese, who were 
great navigators and redoubtable adversaries, like 
the Spaniards and the Turks, tried in their turn to 
arm ships strong enough to sustain the contest, and 
at last succeeded. From this resulted, in Venice, a 
constant development of warlike resources, succes- 
sive enlargements of the arsenal, and improvements 
continually effected under the impulse given by the 
rivalry of other nations. One superiority remained 
to the Venetians in their artillery. In every naval 
battle which they won, it is stated that the fate of 
the day was decided by the good marksmanship of 
the Venetian gunners. All their ships, even to the 
lightest, were armed with cannon ; the small galleys^ 
which were so quick in movement and useful in 
attack, penetrating in every creek of the bay, were 
also able, thanks to the fifteen pieces of artillery 
which they carried, to resist the shock of the enemy. 
At the outset, the arsenal was only a dockyard 
for the construction of merchant vessels and galleys ; 
it occupied, in the eastern part of the town, the site 
of the ancient islands of Gemole or Gemelle (twins) ; 
7 



98 VENICE. 

the place was open^ and it was not till long afterward 
that it was enclosed by walls and organized as a 
national establishment. Up to that time dockyards 
were improvised^ wherever room could be found, 
according as they were required ; thus in 1104 and 
in 1298, fifteen large galleys were put on the stocks, 
in the place where the Eoyal Gardens now are, on 
the very edge of the water. From the thirteenth 
century the arsenal was firmly established, and the 
Senate devoted all its power to enlarging it ; they 
bought the neighboring grounds, dug new docks, 
dry-docks, and repairing and building-yards to 
which they gave names which still indicate that they 
were acquired by degrees. Many times the ruin of 
the arsenal was the great object of the enemy ; a 
continual watch was kept ; the square towers at the 
corners, the circuit of the fortifications, were con- 
stantly guarded by a picked corps. Once, during 
the war with the Grenoese and Turks, spies or paid 
emissaries of the enemy attempted to set fire to the 
arsenal. In 1428, a Brabangon was prosecuted, 
who, it was said, had been bribed by the Duke of 
Milan to destroy the establishment ; he was con- 
demned to be quartered on the Piazzetta ; and his 
body, tied to the tail of a horse, was dragged along 
the Riva de' Schiavoni. 

At the close of the fifteenth century, so says a 
visitor who has left a descriptive memoir, Venice 
employed sixteen thousand workmen, caulkers, car- 



THE ARSENAL. 99 

penters, and painters, and tliirtj-six thousand sea- 
men. It was about this period, in 1491, that the 
Senate created the special magistracy of ^^Prov- 
veditori al arsenale.'' 

These magistrates remained in office two years 
and eight months at a time ; they had to leave their 
palaces in Venice, and live in three houses specially 
built for them, the names of which, Paradiso, Pur 
gatorio, and Inferno^ are kept to this day. Each 
official magistrate had to be a fortnight at a time on 
duty, and while his turn lasted he was obliged to 
sleep in a room prepared for him within the fortified 
enclosure. He kept the keys of the arsenal in his 
room, made his rounds every day, and answered 
with his head for the safety of the place. There 
was a secretary attached to these three magistrates, 
^^il fidelissimo segretario del reggimento.'' There 
was but one passage out of the arsenal, short of 
scaling the high wall; the small iron gate which 
opens on the little Campo was the only means of 
egress. 

Everything concerning ship-building and arma- 
ment, the direction of the works, the purchase of 
wood and iron^ the organization of the workshops, 
the discipline of the workmen, the commanding of 
the troops, the training of seamen, store-keeping, 
provisioning, and contracts, all appertained to the 
'' provveditori.'' They formed among themselves a 
committee for testing and examining new inventions 



L.ofC. 



100 VENICE. 

proposed to them by their fellow-countrymen or by 
foreigners. The artillery formed a separate depart- 
ment in the arsenal, under the special management 
of another magistrate^ the '' Provveditore alP 
artiglieria.'' 

The outward aspect of the arsenal has scarcely 
changed since the middle of the sixteenth century, 
as we learn from an interesting engraving by 
Giacomo Franco, which represents the workmen 
leaving the yard after receiving their pay, and 
shows the same style of architecture and decoration 
which we still see there now, with, however, one 
point of difference : the great lions which now stand 
at the entrance were not yet there. These strange 
sentinels of granite, which give such a singular 
character to the building, are works of antiquity 
brought from Greece by the conquerors of the 
Peloponnese, of which their new owners made bold 
to assume that the origin, or at least the original 
employment, was for the commemoration of the 
famous battle of Marathon. These monuments were 
planted in their present place only in the seventeenth 
century. The learned authors of the celebrated 
compilation, Venise et ses Lagu7ies, say that one of 
the lions stood on the road which leads from Athens 
to Lepsina, the ancient Eleusis, and that the other, 
the sitting one, was at Pirseus. There is a passage 
which leaves no doubt as to the removal of these 
two trophies by the Venetians : '' The gate is now 



THE AESENAL. 101 

called Porto Draco^ or Lion's Gate^ because of a 
colossal marble lion which was placed on a great 
pedestal near the mouth of the harbor. It was ten 
feet high, sitting on its haunches and looking toward 
the south. As the mouth was pierced it was sup- 
posed to have been intended for a fountain in other 
times. In 1687 this lion was conveyed to Venice 
by the Venetians and planted at the gate {port) of 
the arsenal in that city.'' 

The workmen were a picked body, and the Re- 
public counted so much on their fidelity that the 
guard of the Grand Council and Senate was en- 
trusted to them. They were not only artisans, but 
soldiers, with a military organization, and brigaded 
and inspected at their work by the same men who 
commanded them as officers ; and often this body of 
ten thousand — sometimes as many as sixteen thous- 
and — men was the secret guarantee of the internal 
safety of the Venetian government. 

Side by side with the provveditore and subordi- 
nate to him ruled the '^ admiral " or chief superin- 
tendent of the dockyard, who received this naval 
title rather on grounds of general association than 
from the actual nature of his duties ; for he was an 
artisan, but one of the highest class, of acknowledged 
ability and high authority in his trade. He had the 
general direction of the works and the superinten- 
dence of all the building-yards ; he enjoyed some 
much-envied privileges, and at ceremonies wore a 



102 VENICE. 

state costume which gave him ahuost the appearance 
of a noble ; he had a robe of red satin^ covered with 
an outer vest reaching to the knees, and for head- 
dress a toque of violet damask with a gold cord and 
tassels. 

At great State festivals, or when official visits were 
paid to the arsenal by the Doge, the Senate, or any 
sovereign, the ^^ admiral '' occupied the post of honor 
and conducted the great men to the docks which 
were his special domain. On the day of the Sensa, 
when the Doge, accompanied by the Council and 
the ambassadors, went with great pomp on board 
the State ship, the Bucentaiir^ to perform the cere- 
mony of wedding the Adriatic, the high admiral 
acted as pilot. He was even responsible for bringing 
the Signory back safe and sound to shore, and had 
the power, if the weather was doubtful, of insisting 
that they should only cross the channels of the 
lagoon, without venturing into any waters which 
might be dangerous. 

The arsenal contained three divisions, for ship- 
building, small arms, and artillery. In construction 
the Venetians surpassed all other people, and this 
superiority was attributed to two causes : the skill 
of the workmen and the quality of the timber 
they employed. They had adopted the plan of 
putting the administration of the forests under the 
naval department, and all other purposes for which 
timber is used; the building of houses and monu- 



THE ARSENAL. 103 

mentSj fuel^ etc.^ were made subordinate to the 
necessities of ship-building. Timber was bought in 
the province of Treviso^ in Friuli, in Carniola^ in 
Istria and Dahnatia ; but these provinces did not 
supply enough, and recourse was perforce had to 
Albania and even to Germany. The timber^ duly 
measured and stamped^ and cut into solid beams, 
was floated in the Adriatic near the Lido, and was 
kept thus seasoning for ten years before it was used. 
The different pieces of which a galley was com- 
posed were prepared beforehand in the workshops, 
cut and ready to be put together ; and such was the 
perfection of the system that, on the day when Henri 
III. of France came to see the arsenal (1574), while 
he was attending a banquet in the Great Hall, in 
two hours a galley was put together and launched. 
It is needless to say that this was a prodigious feat, 
and that the governors would hardly have trusted 
the life of the Doge to this improvised vessel ; but it 
was a way of exhibiting the powerful means at their 
disposal. In times of sharp political crisis, the 
activity here displayed surpassed all imagination. 
During the famous League which was crowned by 
the victory of Lepanto, a new galley left the arsenal 
every morning for the space of a hundred days con- 
tinuously. To give, by a single authentic detail an 
idea of the means employed to secure this degree 
of efficiency, the State laid a permanent requisition 
on all crops of hemp grown upon its territories, 



104 VENICE. 

and opened special storehouses for its sale^ to which 
all purchasers were compelled to have recourse^ and 
to buy what they needed at a price regulated by law, 
after the government had first appropriated sufficient 
for the wants of the public service. Hence the 
superior quality of the cordage of the Venetian over 
that of any other navy. 

The second department of the arsenal included 
the armament of the galleys, the manufacture, 
preservation, and repair of small arms, etc., as in 
our modern arsenals, the serving out of fresh arma- 
ments to each branch of the service as required. 

The artillery department included the foundries, 
parks, gunners' training schools, all under the re- 
sponsible superintendence of the provveditore of 
artillery. In the sixteenth century the foundries 
were under the direction of the famous brothers 
Alberghetti, who had formed a regular school of 
cannon foundry ; artists like these impressed a 
stamp of their own on every piece which came from 
their hands, and hence it is that whenever one finds 
a gun of Venetian make in the modern artillery- 
museums or historical armories of Europe, it is al- 
most always a masterpiece not only of casting but 
of design. Besides these branches of the service, 
there was also a " chief constructor " of military 
machines, who was bound to keep himself acquainted 
with the progress of mechanical inventions pertain- 
ing to the art of war. 



THE ARSENAL. 105 

Moreover the Venetians were the first to Introduce 
the use of cannon of any kind into Italy ; this they 
did about the year 1376, in the course of the war 
declared against them by Francesco Carrara, Lord 
of Padua. In a chronicle of Andrea Redusio da 
Quero, printed in the Beriim Italicarum ScriptoreSy 
we read as follows : '' It (the cannon) is a great 
instrument made of iron, having a wide mouth, and 
hollow along the whole of its length. You load it 
with a round stone rammed upon a portion of black 
powder made of sulphur, saltpetre, and charcoal ; 
you light this powder by a hole, and the stone is 
driven forth with such violence that never a wall 
can stand against it. You would think it was the 
very thunder of God.'^ We see by this passage 
that we are still in the days of stone-shot, and that 
the pieces in question are guns of position and not 
field-guns. It was in 1380, during the defence of 
Chioggia against the Genoese, that bombards or 
mortars were used for the first time. These pieces 
were only fired once a day. Daniel Chinazzo, in 
his chronicle of the war of Chioggia, gives the 
names of the two of highest calibre. One was la 
Trevisana, the other la Vittoria ; the former shot 
stones of 195 pounds weight, the second of 140. 
It was on the 11th of April, 1512, the day Avhen the 
battle of Ravenna was fought against the Venetians 
by Gaston d'Orleans (who fell in the fight) for the 
French^ Fabricio Colonna for the Romans, and Peter 



106 VENICE. 

of Xavarre for the Spaniards — =it was on this day 
that the Spaniards for the first time turned the can- 
non into a field-arm, by mounting it on carriages 
and driving it to the front among the attacking lines. 
From that time, the Venetians adopted the same 
system, and substituted light artillery for heavy, for 
use in the open field. The famous condottiere 
Bartolorameo Colleoni, whose equestrian statue 
stands upon the Piazza San Giovanni e Paolo, was 
the first to use these deadly engines for the advantage 
of the Republic in her campaigns. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE DOGE OF VENICE. 

Chosen by the Grand Council^ the Doge of 
Venice was elected by a system of successive ballot- 
ings designed to guarantee the integrity of the vote. 
He bore the title of Most Serene Prince. He en- 
joyed rights and privileges presently to be described, 
but was bound to duties and obligations innumerable, 
and, in spite of the authority attaching to his name, 
possessed only the shadow of real power. He was 
essentially a symbolical personage, the personifica- 
tion or incarnation of the Republic before all the 
powers of the world as represented by their ambas- 
sadors. The true practical ruler was the Senate, 
and the action of a chief magistrate having other 
than nominal power, and capable of antagonism with 
the policy of the Grand Council and the Senate, 
would have opened the door to conflict and embar- 
rassment. In appointing their Prince, his electors 
imposed upon him, with the robe of gold and ermine, 
conditions harsh and difficult of fulfilment. A Doge 
must forego political initiative for the rest of his 
days ; he must move beneath the ever-jealous obser- 
vation of men j he is covered with honors but kept 

107 



108 VENICE. 

close in sight ; he is no lono;er a free agent^ he has, 
so to speak, to lay by his individual existence. He 
must not answer a question without the advice of his 
councillors ; he must not open, still less answer, a 
despatch without communicating it to those who are 
set to attend, assist, and keep eye over him by night 
and day, in his private as well as his public life^ and 
even within the chambers of his palace. True, he 
is the official president of the College or Council of 
Ministers, but the Wisemen wait for the Doge and 
his Privy Council to w^ithdraw, before they discuss 
the proposition which he has laid before them ; and 
when their resolution is taken, submit it to the vote 
of the Senate ; and in this vote, the voice of the 
Doge counts for no more than that of any other of 
his brother members of the high chamber, but is 
taken on equal terms with those of all the rest. 

The coinage of Venice, however, w^as stamped with 
the effigy of the Doge, and every possible outward 
sign of royal dignity was granted him. Following 
after the Pope, Emperor, and King, he took prece- 
dence of princes of royal blood. Yet, once become 
the gilded idol, the majestic image of St. Mark, all 
power of will, all aspiration, all liberty, was for ever 
gone. From a kind of Machiavellism in policy, the 
Senate never chose the man of strong individuality, 
of prompt and resolute spirit, of profound political 
capacity, for the head of the government ; all these 
qualities would be nullified by the very conditions 



Senate Chamber^ Ducal Palace 



THE DOGE. 109 

of the office^ and those who possessed them could 
turn them to much better account in less exalted 
offices. The direct action of the Doge could not be 
injurious to the Republic ; he had no power to com- 
promise a negotiation, to raise a conflict, or to take 
a dangerous decision ; for if he happened to drop an 
imprudent word, to give way to a movement of irri- 
tation or a moment of weakness, the Senate solemnly 
disavowed him without pity. By an irrevocable 
decree, of which we have frequent examples in 
history, the sovereignty given could be taken from 
him. And yet this state of complete dependence 
did not lower the dignity of the office in the eyes of 
the Venetians, a fact much to their credit. There 
was on the part of the people an innate feeling of 
deference and respect for the office, as well as of 
personal regard for the citizen who accepted the 
stern law of the Republic, and sacrificed to it in the 
decline of his days, and despite so many hard con- 
ditions, what remained of the sinking fire of his 
spirit. 

In a word, the Doge is generally for the State an 
ensign, a symbol of glory, and in himself a stately 
ruin yet erect. According to the traditional ideas 
of the governing caste, the qualifications most befit- 
ting the Ducal dignity are a renowned old age, an 
honored name, the yet unforgotten fame of some 
great victory or successful treaty, high birth and 
public services^ and all these united at a stage in 



110 VENICE. 

life's career which bespeaks its not too remote ter- 
mination. 

On closely examining the statutes regulating the 
office, Avhich we should now call the Charter or 
Ducal Constitution, and which were then called the 
Promissiones or Promissi, the number of restrictions 
that surrounded the Serene Prince are almost incred- 
ible. Following the growth of these restrictions in 
history, we see how, little by little, the circle con- 
tracted round the Chief of the State. At the dawn 
of the Republic he was a real sovereign, but at the 
height of its power he had become a slave, till the 
day when, by a movement of true patriotism, the 
commissioners appointed to study and revise the 
ducal constitution, with the object of depriving the 
Prince of the last right which yet remained to him, 
declared before the Council that if the great days of 
the Republic were no more, if each year that passed 
saw the prosperity of Venice fading away, the cause 
might perhaps be found in these very restrictions set 
upon the initiative of the Doge. The Committee of 
Revision found no opposition in the Grand Council, 
and tried to restore to the Doge that prestige which 
the nobility had done their best to diminish on the 
occasion of every successive vacancy for the last 
eleven centuries ; but it was too late ; in a few years 
more the Venetian Republic had ceased to exist. 

Let us try, with the help of contemporary docu- 
ments, to reconstitute the mise en scene^ the splendid 



THE DOGE. Ill 

ceremonial^ with which the Republic of Venice 

surrounded its Serene Prince. The Doge is elected, 

he enters St. Mark's, which is the ducal church ; 

there he receives the consecration of the Church, 

and thence he goes to receive the sanction of the 

people. Carried by the workmen of the arsenal in 

that singular chair which was called ^^the well,'' he 

scatters largesse to the people assembled in St. 

Mark's Place. Having entered the palace, he clasps 

the ducal corno round his head at the top of the 

Giants' Staircase, the gold and ermine cloak is 

thrown over his shoulders, and the statutes to which 

he swears obedience are read to him. After this 

investiture, he signs a solemn deed in the chamber 

called the Piongo, receives the flag of the Republic 

from the hands of the Primate of St. Mark's ; and 

at last retires to his private apartments, where he 

gives a banquet to all his electors. 

In public acts he is ^^Messer il Doge," but in 
« 
despatches the ambassadors call him, ^^ il serenissimo 

Principe ;" and these same despatches, which he has 

not the right to read alone, are addressed to him 

personally. He sits on a throne, presides by right 

at the great Councils of State, and receives the 

ambassadors from foreign courts. When he enters, 

whether it be the Grand Council, the Senate, or the 

College, the whole assembly rises. Many engravings 

of the time, some of which are now very rare, show 

us the Doge in the exercise of his functions and in 



112 VENICE. 

the brilliancy and splendor of great public cere- 
monies. A drawing of the year 1560, signed C. V. 
(Cesare Vacellio ?) represents him presiding over the 
College. He is there shown in the exercise of the 
ordinary duties of his office ; it is the daily sitting 
where business is transacted, and we may see the 
whole arrangement of this chamber of the Ducal 
Palace in which the Council of Ministers was held : 
it is the very life of the time, the habitual course of 
affairs drawn from nature by a contemporary artist, 
no (Joubt the nephew of Titian himself. Despatches 
are being read, the secretaries stand in their places, 
the Grand Savii and the Savii of the distant prov- 
inces are listening, discussing and noting. Now let 
us look at the Duke and Duchess of Venice in great 
robes of state, after Messer Jacques Boissard of 
Besangon (1581). We may mistrust this evidence, 
singular as it is ; Boissard is really a Frenchman, he 
has not the blood of Venice in his veins, and, as in 
art a man always betrays his origin, there is some- 
thing strange and far-fetched in the character of the 
two figures to the right and left of the throne which 
we see in his picture — in which also three inscrip- 
tions in three different languages bear witness to the 
cosmopolitan character of the work. Nevertheless 
the print has an historical value. The shape of the 
ducal chair is peculiar, and recalls the style of 
decoration which belonged to Vittoria and Nicolo del 
Abbate. Of quite a different character is the precious 



THE DOGE. U3 

memorial, engraved on eight blocks, called ^^ The 
Procession of the Doge.'' The sale catalogue at- 
tributes the design of this print to Titian, but this 
may be doubted because of a certain stiffness, a 
want of firmness in the setting of the heads, and a 
woodenness of action in the figures. The engraving, 
which is marked '^ extremely rare," is by a certain 
Matteo Pagani ; it is of the highest historical value 
for the costumes and manners of Venice. In it we 
seem to take part, on St. Mark's Place — from which 
the balconies of the Procuratie can be seen filled 
with beautiful and noble ladies — in a ceremony then 
so frequent, the triumphal procession of the Doge 
on some great Venetian holiday. In it the art of 
plastic representation supplies a living commentary 
on the ceremonial as prescribed by official authority 
in those days. In front are the eight standards with 
their ribbons floating in the wind {otto stendari)^ the 
heralds [commendatori)^ after them six silver trum- 
pets (sei tronibe) so long and heavy that young pages 
have to support them near the mouth. The ambas- 
sadors and their retinues follow, then more music, 
bass instruments and flutes (tromie, pifferari), the 
Esquires of the Doge (scudieri), the Canons of St. 
Mark and the Patriarch of the basilica (canonkij 
patriarca) ; the silver candelabra carried by a page, 
which preceded the ducal coronet (corno) carried by 
a squire on a gold dish. The Secretaries, tlie Chap- 
lain, the chair covered with cloth of gold^ and the 

8 



114 VENICE. 

cushion^ and special belongings of the Doge, precede 
one of the highest dignitaries of the State, the 
Grrand Chancellor (il Canziller Grande) ; finally the 
Most Serene Doge, over whose head is carried the 
omhrela. 

In front of the Prince walks a child splendidly 
dressed like a little Signer ; this is il Ballottino, 
and his business is to receive the ballot balls. In 
the suite of the Prince walks the Pope's Legate, 
Monsieur VAmhassadeur^ — thus the ambassador of 
France is styled without even adding the name of 
his country, — and the envoys of the different Euro- 
pean courts. Between the ambassadors and the 
College is borne the sword of state, la Spada, — an 
emblem of the power conferred by Pope Alexander 
III. The procession was closed by the Signory, 
that thrice illustrious body, composed of its three 
several orders of Wisemen. Every period, from the 
fifteenth century down to our own days, has left us 
evidences and memorials of all kinds to tell us of 
historical facts, of ceremonies, and public and pri- 
vate festivals, though there are few to be found of 
such importance as this which we have just described. 
It may safely be affirmed that from Carpaccio to 
Longhi there is no break in the chain of evidence 
that we possess ; the sixteenth century, however, can 
boast of giving us the fullest details ; moreover, the 
artists of that age having lost the awkwardness of 
their predecessors, who knew little of perspective, 



THE DOGE. 115 

have yet enough natural freshness left to preserve 
the truth of evidence. 

From this point of view^ where — after the pro- 
cession attributed to Titian — could be found a me- 
morial of more pre-eminent importance than the 
print in fourteen blocks by Jost Amman, a German 
who lived about the middle of the sixteenth century ? 
This piece, which the catalogues of the most cele- 
brated cabinets of Europe also mark as ^^ extremely 
rare/' measures over four yards square and repre- 
sents the view of St. Mark's Place at Venice, with 
the cortege of the Duke at the ceremony of the 
'' Marriage of the Sea.'' The procession here deploys 
its sumptuous length ; in the above-mentioned print 
we had a series of details, here we have the whole ; 
the same procedure is followed in the cortege, but 
the Bucentaur is already alongside, and the Doge is 
about to embark. On the waves of the lagoon, 
quaintly tossed by the wind and rendered with a 
peculiar touch, we see gondolas thrown into collision, 
State gondolas carrying companies of richly-ap- 
parelled women, official gondolas carrying Turkish 
and Dalmatian visitors. 

Other processions of a religious character pass 
along the Eiva bearing sacred relics ; some come 
from San Zaccaria, others enter St. Mark's. But 
what really attracts us most, in this great compo- 
sition, no doubt the largest woodcut known next to 
the " Passage of the Red Sea" after Titian^ is not so 



116 VENICE. 

much the representation of a State ceremonial^ for 
we have in fact just seen all that in Vecellio's pic- 
ture ; but the accessory episodes which set before us 
the life of the quays, the retail commerce going on 
in the ground-floors, the ladies on the terraces, over 
the balustrades of which they have thrown rich 
oriental carpets to lean upon. At the time Amman 
engraved his fourteen blocks the Libreria Vecchia 
of Sansovino did not yet exist at the corner of the 
Piazzetta, and there is seen in the angle one of those 
small and characteristic houses of which there are 
still two or three remaining near the Sotto Portico 
San Zaccaria. 

This ceremony of the ^^ Marriage of the Sea'' is 
certainly the most characteristic of all the public 
ceremonies peculiar to Venice. It is held on the 
day of the Sensa ; to it all the great dignitaries of 
State repair in their robes of office, accompanied by 
the ambassadors of foreign powers, who have their 
place of honor in the cortege. The embarking of 
the Doge takes place, to the sound of bells and the 
noise of trumpets and guns, on the Quay of the 
Piazzetta itself, exactly between the two granite 
columns The company takes its place on board 
the floating palace, all bright with gold and deco- 
rated with rich arras and hangings ; the six stand- 
ards float at the bow. 

The Doge occupies a small saloon in the stern, 
with the Patriarch of Venice at his side. The 



THE DOGE. 117 

Bucentaur is towed along by twenty boats^ and 
rowed besides by a crew of dockyard workmen. 
The gilded keel glides slowly over the lagoon, 
and moves towards the channel of the Lido, steered 
by the " high admiral.'^ A thousand small boats 
follow in the wake, a motley flotilla carrying the 
population of Venice. As soon as the point of 
the Lido is doubled, where is the entrance to the 
open sea, the Bucentaur lays her head to the 
Adriatic ; the forts thunder in full salvo ; the great 
Bissonne, holiday gondolas with bands on board, 
make the air of heaven resound ; the bells peal 
out together from all the bell-towers of Venice ; 
and the whole multitude, from the mightiest to 
the humblest, uncover and rise to their feet. The 
Patriarch blesses the marriage ring, — a gold ring 
of which the signet is made of three materials, 
onyx, lapis-lazuli and malachite, and which is en- 
graved with a book as emblem of St. Mark. He 
then presents the ring to the Doge ; an assistant 
priest, standing by with a great vase of holy 
water, pours this into the sea, and into the ripples 
where it falls the Doge drops the marriage-ring 
with these sacramental words, '' Sea, we espouse 
thee, in the sign of true and everlasting dominion.'^ 
The return to Venice is effected in the same order, 
and with the same ceremonial ; the Doge giving a 
prodigious banquet in the hall of the Great Coun- 
cil; and in the evening there is dancing at the 



118 VENICE. 

Ducal Palace. The workmen from the arsenal 
have a dinner of their own, also at the Palace^ 
under the presidency of their ^^ high admiral/' as- 
sisted by the gastaldo ; the Doge sends them four 
flasks a head of Greek Muscat wine^ a box of 
comfits bearing the ducal arms^ a bag of medicines 
intended to cure them in case of accidents in their 
trade, and a parcel of silver medals. The custom of 
the day — a custom repeated to the last — required 
that each workman should be free to carry home the 
drinking-cups, napkin, knife and fork, and every- 
thing which had served him at his dinner on that 
day. 

Of two of the most celebrated Doges, Luigi Mo- 
cenigo, and Antonio Priuli, portraits have been left 
us by two anonymous painters, one of the sixteenth 
and the other of the seventeenth century. The 
portrait of Mocenigo has a special interest, as set- 
ting before us the Doge in full armor, breastplated 
and sword in hand ; while Priuli wears the gold robe 
of office. Mocenigo is surrounded by vanquished 
Turks, bound in the midst of trophies ; Glory 
reaches him her laurel, and Victory blows a point 
upon her trump ; while the less warlike Priuli has 
no attributes but those of Peace and Plenty. A 
portrait of a more penetrating character than these 
is that which has been left us by Giovanni Bellini of 
Leonardo Loredano, who was Doge for the twenty 
years from 1501 to 1521. This admirable work 



THE DOGE. 119 

was formerly an orDament of the Grimani Palace at 
Venice, and is now in the National Gallery in Lon- 
don. It would be easy to multiply examples of 
portraits of the several Doges ; for the whole series, 
with the single exception of Marino Faliero, appear 
along the frieze of the hall of the Grand Council. 

In order to complete our picture of their Seren- 
ities the Doges, some examples may be referred to 
of arms and armor which can with certainty be 
identified as having belonged to them. The admir- 
able collection of sixteenth century treasures belong- 
ing to Baron A. de Rothschild in Paris contains the 
magnificent sword which that famous amateur had 
the taste to single out, at the sale of the Sechan col- 
lection, and the spirit, undaunted by the hottest fire 
of bidding, to make it his own. No price can be too 
high for so incomparable a work of art. This mar- 
vellous weapon without doubt belonged to some 
illustrious Venetian captain (possibly to Sebastian 
Venier the victor of Lepanto) ; thus much is proved 
by the character of the weapon, the exquisite taste 
of the design, and especially by the appropriateness 
of certain attributes, as for example the silver cres- 
cent on the hilt, which is the emblem of a victory 
over the Turks. A second example has great his- 
torical interest. It is the sword of Morosini, the 
famous conqueror of the Peloponnese. It is much 
inferior to the sword of the Rothschild collection, and 
furnishes, in its vulgar rococo design, a striking 



120 VENICE. 

example of the art of the decadence in contrast with 
that of the sixteenth century. The weapon is pre- 
served in the treasury of St. Mark's. It is a State 
or show weapon, and was presented by Pope Alex- 
ander VIII. to the Doge who had driven the Turk 
from the Morea. Inasmuch as the great dignitaries 
of the Republic were forbidden by law to receive 
presents from strangers, and as, on the other hand, 
such a tribute from a sovereign pontiff could not be 
refused, the present was made national property. 
Among the trophies which the Austrians carried off 
to Vienna in 1866 were a shield, a helmet, and a 
sword which belonged to the family of the Ziani, 
and were formerly included in the Museum in the 
hall of the Council of Ten. They are still pre- 
served in the Imperial Palace, although nearly all 
the other treasures removed from Venice at this 
time — public documents, works of art, and historical 
memorials of all kinds — have since been restored to 
the kingdom of Italy. Strange mistakes have been 
made concerning these particular pieces of armor, 
and they have been catalogued as belonging to the 
Doge Ziani. Now as the date of Sebastian Ziani is 
1173, and that of Pierro 1205, it is plain that 
neither one nor the other can have had anything to 
do with a buckler and headpiece which, by their 
character, clearly belong to the sixteenth century, 
nor yet with a sword patterned with fleurs-de-lys, 
which, though much older than the other two, is 



THE DOGE. 121 

certainly not later than the end of the fourteenth cen- 
tury. But what gives a real value to these relics is 
that J mistaken attributions apart, they certainly did 
have a place in the hall of the Council of Ten, and 
therefore must have belonged to some illustrious 
owner. 

In a magnificent volume familiar to bibliographers, 
printed at Venice in the seventeenth century as a 
monument to the glory of the family of Barbadigo, 
Numismatica Barbadica Gente. is an illustration re- 
presenting the attributes of authority of the Doge, 
arranged in the form of a trophy — the crown — 
the throne — the sword — the trumpets — the torches. 
In the possession of the popular French painter M. 
Florent Williams, is a precious casket intended to 
hold the corno or horned cap of the Doge ; it bears 
the symbol of the lion, and the iron-work is worthy 
of the finest time of Venetian art. It is a thing to 
bring the water to the mouth of Barozzi, the cour- 
teous director of the Municipal Museum at Venice. 

The reader may be here reminded of the origin 
of the symbolic attributes of the Doge. The Most 
Serene Prince enjoyed in perpetuity, after the year 
1173, certain privileges granted by Pope Alexander 
III. to the Sebastiano Ziani of that day. The Pope, 
driven from his States by the Emperor Barbarossa, 
had sought the help of the Venetians, who encoun- 
tered the imperial fleet in a sea-fight and destroj^ed 
it. Hereupon, wishing to show his gratitude to the 



122 VENICE. 

Republic and to honor Venice in the person of her 
chief magistrate, the Pope ordained that the Doge 
should walk henceforward preceded by officers 
carrying a lighted candle, a sword in its sheath, a 
chair of state, and a cushion covered in gold, and by 
heralds bearing the standards of St. Mark unfurled 
to the wind to the sound of silver trumpets. The 
Doge also received: from the Holy Father that singu- 
lar and poetical privilege of wedding the Adriatic 
Sea upon Ascension-day, in commemoration of the 
victory won by the Venetians on the day of that 
festival. The privilege which constituted the one 
technical title of the Venetians to their claim of pos- 
session over the waters of the Adriatic was granted 
by the Holy Father in these words : '^ Receive from 
my hand this ring, and let it be the sign of the lord- 
ship which you hold over the sea. Take her in 
marriage every year, you and your successors, in 
order that posterity may know that she, the sea, 
belongs to you by right of victory, and shall be sub- 
ject unto you as the wife unto the husband.^' 



Basilica of St* Marfc^ 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE AKT OF M EDAL ENGRAVING. 

It would be a difficult though not uninteresting task 
to attempt to give an idea of Venetian numismatics by 
framing a sketch of the catalogue of the medals 
struck by Venetians or having special reference to 
Venice^ and great reserve would be necessary in such 
an undertaking. Venice may, indeed, claim a large 
share in the whole art of Italian medal-engraving. 
If the pieces directly illustrating Venetian history 
are not, as specimens, so fine as those connected 
with the history of Milan or of the Florentine Re- 
public, still the majority of the designers who illus- 
trated the history of Italy on medals, if not actually 
Venetians, were at least subjects of the Republic 
and born in her territory. Venice can in fact claim 
as her own Vittor Camelio, one of the greatest 
medal engravers of the Renaissance, and Vittor 
Pisanello, an admirable painter, a yet more admir- 
able sculptor, and an incomparable engraver. Pisa- 
nello was a subject of the Republic born at Verona. 
It was there that this beautiful art took its rise : a 
whole group of skilful medallists formed themselves 
there and went out to become famous in the different 

123 



124 VENICE. 

cities of Italy : Matteo de Pasti, Delia Torre^ J. M. 
Pomedello, J. Carotto, were also Veronese ; Sper- 
andeo, whose signature we find at the foot of some 
of the medals of the Doges, came from Mantua ; 
Guidisani and Boldu^ again^ belong to Venice^ and 
the Bellini themselves, who hold so illustrious a 
place in the Venetian school^ did not remain 
strangers to this movement. 

However, except the medals of the Doges, which 
are historical monuments of the highest value, the 
art of Venice proper in this field is not so rich as 
one would expect, and we find at the foot of the 
specimens but few signatures of the great men such 
as Camelio, Pomedello, Guidisani and Sperandeo. It 
is fair matter for surprise that the subjects of the 
Eepublic should have had to carry their talents into 
foreign countries and so seldom devoted them to re- 
producing the features of their Doges and nobles. 
The name of Pisanello, for instance, appears but 
once or twice in the list of Venetian works of this 
kind. 

I should more willingly find the reason for this 
anomaly in the very instincts of the people than in 
certain restrictive laws decreed by a Senate jealous 
of letting distinguished personalities predominate in 
the State. W^here was so little homage ever ren- 
dered by the State to individuals, no matter how 
great the public debt to them for some crowning 
victory ? W^here are there fewer statues erected to 



THE ART OF MEDAL ENGRAVING. 125 

special persons^ nobles^ statesmen, soldiers or artists ? 
Even when the times changed and the laws became 
less jealous and the Republic less austere, a quite 
exceptional value was set upon any public homage 
rendered to a single person. The funeral monu- 
ments are there no doubt, to protest against this by 
their pomp and grandeur ; but tombs are only 
erected for the dead, and the dead do not conspire : 
accordingly the Republic did not oppose display of 
this kind. If the statue of Colleoni stands proudly 
on the Piazza of San Giovanni e Paolo, it was not 
there till the great Captain had been in his grave for 
some years ; and even so, the Senate discussed pas- 
sionately whether it should accept the legacy he left 
to the Republic, because this legacy implied a con- 
tract between the dead man and the State, and when 
the Pregadi did decide to accept it, instead of erect- 
ing the bronze statue on St. Mark's Place they rele- 
gated it to that of San Giovanni e Paolo. 



CHAPTER VII. 

AECHITECTUKE— ITS SUCCESSIVE TEANSFOE- 
MATIONS. 

After the purely Roman remains existing on 
Venetian territory in the shape of altars^ sepulchral 
urnSj tombsj walls^ and fragments of ruined tri- 
umphal arches — after these the earliest architectural 
monument of the district is the cathedral of the 
island of Torcello, which belongs to the period 
styled by the Italians Romano-Christian. Its foun- 
dation dates from 641. Naturally, the lapse of 
twelve centuries has left its mark upon these ancient 
memorials of the devotion of the first settlers among 
the lagoons. The church has been tampered with 
and restored^ but its original form has not been 
seriously altered, and it constitutes even now a very 
complete and very interesting example of the art of 
Venice in the days just preceding the influence of 
the Byzantine style. 

The island town of Torcello owes its origin to the 
destruction of the mainland town of Altinum by the 
barbarians. The people of Altinum sought a refuge 
from the devastation constantly wrought upon their 
homes by the violence of these hordes as they passed 

126 



ARCHITECTURE— ITS TRANSFORMATIONS. 127 

to and fro ; they found what they wanted in the 
islands of the lagoon, and to that new home where 
they settled in nakedness and desolation they trans- 
ported their manners and customs, the tastes and 
instincts of architectural construction. They were 
people of Latin race, and they built in the Roman 
style. Selvatico is even of opinion that, in the 
boats which had served them for their flight, they 
plied afterward between their new home and the 
ruins of wieir old, and brought av>^ay the dis- 
membered friezes and capitals and precious marbles 
to build and decorate their new house of worship. 
The only other building at Torcello of the same 
antiquity as the Cathedral is its dependency, the 
Baptistry. The Cathedral belongs to the type of 
building of which there are such beautiful specimens 
at Rome — with the three aisles, the central one end- 
ing above the altar in a demi-cupola adorned with 
mosaics, the steps in the form of a semicircular 
amphitheatre, the episcopal chair of Peter sur- 
mounting these steps in the middle, and all this part 
of the church separated from the rest by a stone 
barrier or railing carved out of the solid, and gen- 
erally pierced with open work. 

San Fosca in Torcello is a church of another 
period, and a period interesting to students because 
it exhibits the transition between Romano-Christian 
and Byzantine architecture at Venice. From in- 
ternal evidence^ the building might be ascribed to 



128 VENICE. 

the ninth century, but the only documentary evi- 
dence of its antiquity is a deed of gift executed by 
the sisters Maria and Buona^ making over an annual 
payment to this church as the church of their parish; 
and this deed is dated 1011. It is needless to say 
that here as everywhere else the builders have 
turned to account fragments of ancient workman- 
ship. The characteristic feature of the style is the 
use of the Roman arch, with a new richness and 
curiosity in decoration, with incipient influences of 
Oriental exuberance, the overloaded friezes ^of Arab 
art, the fretted pendentives, and similar enrichments. 
The design is no longer on the old Roman plan, it 
has the Oriental characteristics of the cupola, and 
of the Greek cross for ground-plan. Sometimes^ 
indeed^ the local architects do not understand the 
new style sufficiently to give regular construction 
and completeness to the cupola, or to make its 
external form correspond with and explain its 
internal ; but in principle this feature always forms 
part of the design. 

San Donato of Murano is another church belong- 
ing to the Byzantine period, with the Arab influence 
already asserting itself; the exterior adornment of 
its apse, and a double tier of open arcades, — the 
openings of the upper tier filled in with balustrades, 
and the arches, approaching horse-shoe shape, 
carried on double columns, — recall the arcading 
system of the Arab mosques. The end of the 



AKCHITECTUKE— ITS TRANSFORMATIONS. 129 

tenth century is generally given by the chroniclers 
as the date of this church. 

The great Basilica of St. Mark is a building 
essentially Oriental. The splendor of Byzantium 
proclaims itself in every stone of this prodigious 
reliquary^ this sumptuous monument raised to God 
by a people of merchants^ soldiers, lawgivers, who 
became the envy of the world by their wealth no 
less by their fourteen centuries of inviolate freedom.^ 

Some chronicles give the year 828, others 831, as 
that in which the body of St. Mark was transported, 
by means of a surprise or pious thief, from Constan- 
tinople to Venice. The Doge Partecipazio decreed 
that a church should be built in honor of the saint, 
to which his relics should be transported. The 
decree w^as carried into effect before the end of the 
ninth century ; but this first church of St. Mark 
was burnt, along with the Ducal Palace, on the 
occasion of a revolt against the Doge Candiano in 
976. It was rebuilt, more sumptuously than before, 
by Pietro Orseolo. Additions made in 1043 by 
Domenico Contarini gave it very nearly its defini- 
tive and present form. Its enrichment was the 
special work of Domenico Selvo, at whose bidding 
all captains, travellers, and merchants sailing be- 
tween Venice and Greece or the East, brought back 
for the adornment of St. Mark's the spoils of num- 
berless monuments of antiquity. This task of 
ornamenting the church was completed in 1071. 
9 



130 VENICE. 

It has been maintained that the task was directed 
by architects from Constantinople ; but Cicognara^ 
the great Venetian writer on art, vehemently main- 
tains the contrary ; demanding, not without warmth, 
how — since the Italians had made colored glass from 
the ninth century, while in the twelfth a certain 
Hubert had executed mosaics at Treviso, while in 
1008 the church of Torcello had been restored 
and its original character retained, and while eighty 
churches had been built at Venice before St. Mark's, 
— how then could the Venetians possibly need to go, 
to Constantinople for artists to build their Basilica? 
Selvatico, on his part, takes the same side for reasons 
intrinsic to the subject. He compares the plan of 
St. Mark's at Venice and that of St. Sophia at Con- 
stantinople. However this may be, the Byzantine 
influence in the building is at any rate undeniable. 
St. Mark's is an Italian church ; but a people cannot 
escape its own genius or the consequences of its own 
history, manners, and life. It was natural that the 
Venetians should show in their architecture the in- 
fluence of Constantinople, whither they were wont 
from the first to resort as travellers and merchants, j 
and which they were soon to enter as conquerors. 
The art of Venice was an art at once partly Oriental 
and profoundly national. 

St. Mark's, being a building of the Byzantine 
period, has an extremely curious crypt, beneath 
its high altar, characteristic of that period. This 



AKCHITECTURE~ITS TRANSFORMATIONS. 131 

crypt is comparatively little known, and was filled 
with water for several years after we ourselves were 
first acquainted with it. It had been closed to the 
public for three centuries, and numbers of people in 
Venice had not so much as a suspicion of its exist- 
ence. We had the opportunity, during a stay of 
unusual length in the city, of watching the progress 
of the works which have now rendered it accessible. 
This is an excellent achievement, for, of all crypts 
which we know, this, if not the most ancient, is at 
any rate the most remarkable in form. It is well 
known that the shrines and altars raised in the early 
days of Christianity over the tombs of those mar- 
tyred for the faith, were called crypts or confes- 
sionals. During the ages of persecution, the burials 
of the faithful used to be conducted secretly in the 
subterranean chambers of the ancient basilicas ; and 
after the close of that age, altars were raised above 
the tombs which enclosed these precious remains, 
the remains of those who had become the tutelary 
saints of the basilicas beneath which they lay. 
And as such memorials always had their place in 
the underground parts of the building, they were 
called crypts (xpurrra, hidden places) or under-con- 
fessionals. 

The Doge Partecipazio, who set on foot the 
original construction of St. Mark about the year 
829, followed the usage of primitive times ; he 
prescribed^ as a part of the plan^ a subterranean 



132 VENICE. 

crypt of monumental proportions, and charged his 
son John, who succeeded him in the Ducal office, to 
deposit beneath the principal altar the body of 
St. Mark, who became thenceforward the guardian 
saint of Venice. It was by Bono, tribune of Mala- 
mocco, and by Eustico da Torcello, that the bones 
of the saint had been brought to Venice from 
Constantinople. The crypt was built in the form 
of a cross, and occupies all the space beneath the 
presbytery of the church and the two lateral chapels 
of St. Peter and St. Clement. It is simple in con- 
struction. Its dimensions are twenty-five yards 
long and twenty-eight wide and its total area two 
hundred and eighty yards square. The highest 
point of its vaulting is immediately under the pave- 
ment of the central altar in the basilica overhead. 
The side walls are irregular and broken up with 
niches. The ceiling is vaulted and was intended 
to be painted in fresco, of which decoration some 
traces still remain. It is carried upon sixty columns 
of Greek marble, each six feet high, rising from the 
floor without bases, and having Byzantine capitals. 
The centre altar of this crypt was placed immedi- 
ately beneath the high altar of the basilica, and the 
four famous sculptured columns of the baldaquin of 
the high altar above are repeated in four other 
columns, expressly designed to sustain their weight, 
and correspondingly placed, in the subterranean 
structure. The altar of the crypt itself, which 



AKCHITECTUEE— ITS TRANSFORMATIONS. 133 

encloses the relics of St. Mark, is an enormous mass 
bedded upon a square block and buttressed by four 
heavy columns which are bound to one another by 
smaller ones. The sacristy occupies the left side, 
on the right stood another altar 5 the crypt was 
lighted by five windows opening to the interior 
courts of the Ducal Palace. 

As St. Mark's is built upon one of the lowest 
levels in Venice, the crypt has ever since the six- 
teenth century been damp and subject to flooding. 
The account-books of the sacristy show that in 1563 
the floor of the subterranean structure had to be 
entirely renewed at great cost. The works then 
executed were not enough ; the wet constantly 
increased^ until the priests were obliged to abandon 
the crypt. In 1580 they got leave to meet in a 
chapel of the basilica which is dedicated to St. John 
the Evangelist, instead of in their subterranean 
place of worship. Some years later, when they 
wished to obtain possession of the guardian image 
of the Virgin which had been left in the crypt, they 
sought permission from the Doge Marino Grimani ; 
and on the 3d of July, 1604, a descent was made 
with great ceremony into the dark and deserted 
subterranean sanctuary. The company consisted 
of the entire confraternity and a deputation of 
members of the Senate. The floor was found to 
be entirely under water, and it was necessary to lay 
down layers of bricks before the sacred objects 



134 VENICE. 

could be brought away. The image of the Virgin 
and Child that stood upon the marble altar, and the 
statues of St. Peter, St. Mark, St. Catherine and 
St. Ursula, were deposited in the reliquary of the 
church, Avhere they are still to be seen ; and the 
crypt was closed again, although the idea of re- 
opening and setting it in order on some future day 
was by no means abandoned. 

With a view to this restoration the Doge Marco 
Foscarini and the artist Flaminio Cornaro, cele- 
brated for his drawings of the churches of Venice, 
went down at different periods into the crypt, in 
each instance with the idea of having it dried ; but 
as yet nothing came of the project. It was aban- 
doned again after the death of Foscarini ; every- 
thing was walled up, and it seemed as if the thought 
of reopening the crypt had been laid aside, until, in 
our own century, certain ecclesiastical arrangements 
led to a renewal of the attempt. About the begin- 
ning of the century, St. Mark's was made the 
cathedral church of the city instead of the original 
Cathedral of San Pietro di Castello. In consequence 
of this change, the old high altar of the basilica was 
found too small, and demolished to give place to 
another more worthy of the dignity of a cathedral ; 
and in the course of this demolition a coffin was 
found in the centre of what had been supposed to 
be the solid structure of stone beneath the ancient 
altar; and upon the strength of certain evidences, 



AKCHITECTUKE— ITS TRANSFORMATIONS. 135 

afterward fully verified^ tins coffin was from the first 
supposed to be in all probability that containing the 
body of St. Mark. A few years later^ in 181 1^ a 
commission^ consisting of Count Vendramin Calergi^ 
Count Filiasi, and Antonio Diedo^ again examined 
the crypt, and the results of their examination were 
given in the drawings published in the w^ork, at this 
time in progress, of Count Cicognara. Beneath the 
stone structure was found a wooden coffin with silk 
and woollen coverings ; some openings were made 
in it ; and by the date it was evident that the actual 
remains of the body of St. Mark had been dis- 
covered. The coffin was taken out in the month 
of May in the same year ; in 1835 it was solemnly 
deposited within the new high altar of the basilica. 
Meanwhile, in 1830, after some repairs had been 
made to the pavement of the presbytery, the thick 
layer of mud which covered the floor of the crypt 
was removed ; lateral openings were made in order 
to admit a free current of air ; but once more it was 
found necessary to give up the hope of stopping the 
process of gradual infiltration of water from without^ 
and so establishing free access to the underground 
edifice. 

It was not until our own time that this task was 
at last accomplished. A Prefect of Venice, the 
Commendatore Torelli, having been struck by the 
surprising results achieved elsewhere with Bergamo 
cement, proposed to employ this material for the 



136 VENICE. 

restoration of the crypt of St. Mark. He entrusted 
this difficult undertaking to the engineer Meduna, 
giving him for a colleague Milesi, who had just com- 
pleted the construction of the bridge over the Adda 
at Rivalta. Signer Milesi came to Venice^ assumed 
the direction of the operations undertaken by the 
Bergamo Company^ and had them conducted under 
the personal supervision of his son. The works 
were begun in February and finished in April. The 
floor was completely renewed^ and covered with a 
composition made of the sand of the Brenta, gres cle 
SiUj and Bergamo cement. All the old windows 
were restored and new ones were opened^ in order to 
light this underground portion of the church. The 
outer wall, toward the Canal, was carefully covered 
with a thick bed of the same cement as had been 
employed in the inside. Lastly, the staircase leading 
upward from the crypt to the church above^ and 
the altar in the centre of the crypt^ were restored 
to their primitive condition. The block in the crypt 
which contained the body of the Saint corresponds 
in its elevation to a sort of columbarium. Thus 
this ingenious piece of restoration^ which the Doge 
Marco Foscarini had vainly attempted, was achieved 
after three centuries by the modern administration 
of Venice. 

It is certain that the spoils of Roman antiquity 
form part of the enrichments of St. Mark's. It is 
commonly said that the marble capitals and bas- 



AKCHITECTURE— ITS TRANSFORMATIONS. 137 

reliefs come from the East ; but the most trust- 
worthy historians are disposed to hold that^ when 
the barbarians destroyed Aquileia^ a town so power- 
ful that it was called a second Eome^ and iVltinum, 
one of the most important cities of Italy^ all that was 
left whole among these ruins was transported to 
Torcello and to Venice. There is a solitary garden 
at Trieste^ where the present writer has spent many 
an hour^ a garden full of relics and fragments of the 
old Aquileia^ having been chosen by the Austrian 
government as the place of keeping for all antiqui- 
ties found scattered between Trieste and the Lisonzo. 
This garden is called the ^^Lapidario Aquilense.'^ 
How much more justly the same title might be given 
to the church of St. Mark, enriched as it is with the 
stones of that famous city overthrown by the barba- 
rians ! 

/ In the detail of the ornamentation of St. Mark^ 
certain points are absolutely Greek ; the two fantas- 
tic peacocks drinking in a cup are an Oriental 
design ; the same symbols recur at Damascus, in the 
churches of St. Sophia and St. Theotocos and at San 
Vitale at Ravenna, which is a strictly Byzantine 
edifice, built by Justinian in 547. It is just as much 
part of a regular scheme or system of ornamentation 
as the well-known wave pattern or any other Greek 
ornament. The Greeks had taken this design from 
Asia, the Venetians borrowed it in tlieir turn and 
applied it not only to ecclesiastical but also to civil 



138 VENICE. 

architecture, as is proved by examples from palaces 
on the Grand Canal. 

Two very famous specimens of Oriental art, which 
do not form any integral part of the basilica but are 
among its external ornaments, are those which stand 
at the right-hand extremity of the fagade at the gate 
called Paper Gate (della Carta) because it was in 
the vestibule within this gate/ at the foot of the 
Giants' Staircase, that the secretaries used to sit and 
write. These Oriental monuments consist of two 
enormous pillars decorated with Greek crosses and 
fruit-bearing vines springing from vases. They are 
said to have originally belonged to the church of St. 
Saba at Acre, and to have been brought to Venice 
with other trophies by Lorenzo Tiepolo after his 
victory over the Genoese, y The Sivos Chronicle 
tells how a quarrel arose at Acre between the Vene- 
tians and Genoese, who both had commercial estab- 
lishments there and to whom a church had been 
allowed in common for the services of their religion. 
Tlie Genoese claimed the sole occupation of this 
church, and shut themselves up within it as in a for- 
tress. There they were besieged by the Venetians, 
who stormed the church, destroyed it that it might 
not be defended against them again, and in order to 
preserve a memorial of their victory sent these two 
pillars to Venice ; the very decree of the Senate is 
preserved, according to which the place is appointed 
where they are to be set up. 



Ducal Palace^ Upper Part of the Porta defla Carta 



AECHITECTUKE— ITS TRANSFORMATIONS. 139 

In architecture^ everything has meaning^ and the 
stones of Venice are the confirmation of her written 
history. We know that St. Saba of Acre was built 
in the sixth century ; these pillars, then, constitute a 
rich and admirable specimen of the Byzantine carved 
work of that age, so that we can compare in close 
neighborhood Torcello and Acre, that is to say, the 
Eomano-Christian and the Oriental schools of one 
and the same period. 

Taking the two churches of Torcello and St. 
Mark's together, we have the type of that architec- 
ture which prevailed at Venice from the seventh to 
the tenth century. It is a mixture of Roman and of 
Byzantine elements, but soon we shall perceive the 
introduction of a third element which will serve to 
give the art its national and distinctive character. 
We mean the Lombard element, the style which, 
first invented in Lombardy, soon spread over all 
Italy and to which at Venice the name of Italo- 
Byzantine is given for the sake of exactness. The 
Fondaco dei Turchi, and the well-known palace 
called ^^ dei Santi Apostoli '' in the quarter of the 
Rialto, near the Traghetto of the same name, are 
among the finest examples of this style. 
/The famous twin columns of St. Mark's Place be- 
^long to the same period ; but these enormous shafts 
of solid Oriental granite do not properly belong to 
Venetian art. Three such shafts were brought from 
Constantinople ; one of them fell into the water at the 



140 VENICE. 

moment when it was being raised. The two which 
remained were long left lying on the ground for want 
of adequate means to set them up. One day a 
Lombard named Nicolo Barettieri proposed to take 
in hand this difficult task ; he achieved it success- 
fully, and received, besides a handsome reward, the 
lucrative privilege of keeping a gaming-table at the 
foot of the pillars. On the summit of one of them 
the Venetians placed the lion of St, Mark ; on the 
other a statue of St. Theodore, who was regarded as 
the patron of the town before St. Mark. The lion, 
so vigorous in outline and so spirited in its archaic 
and monumental design, was specially made for this 
destination. In 1797 it was removed to Paris and 
placed for a time in the Louvre. The Venetian his- 
torians allege that it came back to its native land 
without its eyes, which had been made of precious 
stones ; however that may be, certain it is that the 
lion is blind, and the Venetians, Avho felt so cruelly 
the destruction of their State, have a saying that 
this is in order that it may be saved the sight of 
Venice fallen from her greatness. / 

Naturally, the basilica of St. Mark's, a monument 
of many styles, which continued to receive successive 
additions from the eleventh century onAvard, offers 
many features which belong to the Lombard period. 
The period next following is the Gothic, or as some 
prefer to call it, the ^^ Arab Pointed Arch '' period, 
since there are learned writers who contend that the 



AKCHITECTUKE— ITS TEANSFOEMATIONS. 141 

style had its origin in Arabia and Egypt. Inasmuch, 
however, as tradition represents the style as coming 
from the north, and its graceful aisles, its slender 
arcades and solemn vaulting, as being the likeness 
of the stately glades of northern forests, we wdll not 
take upon ourselves to disturb the received denomi- 
nation, and without raising the question of names 
we will describe in order of date the most important 
buildings of this style, with the exception of those 
monuments of civil architecture which we describe 
elsewhere in our account of the most beautiful pal- 
aces. The Casa al Campo dei Mori, the Casa 
Falier, and the church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei 
Frari, which last is a kind of Venetian Pantheon, 
are strictly of this period. The arrangement of this 
church of the Frari is like that of our own cathe- 
drals, with great pointed arches carried upon piers 
and dividing the side aisles from the central nave. 
But its various parts are not all of the same period, 
and we find in it certain examples illustrative not of 
the Gothic style, but of the Kenaissance. Of the 
same period as the Frari are the churches of the 
Servi, the Volto Santo and San Giovanni e Paolo, 
the last being one of the most prodigious monuments 
of the age. It is supposed to have been begun in 
1234, but appears in fact to have been still unfinislied 
in 1450, which explains the differences of style to be 
observed among its various parts. It was in a 
chapel of this church of San Giovanni e Paolo that 



142 VENICE. 

one of the famous masterpieces of Titian, the Death 
of Peter Martyr, was destroyed by fire a few years 
ago. It was placed above the altar, and the candles 
used in the service having been carelessly left near 
some hangings, set fire to this portion of the build- 
ing ; the loss of a series of precious bas-reliefs was 
another consequence of the same accident. 

Among the most splendid examples of this Gothic 
period must also be cited the lagoon front of the Du- 
cal Palace, which belongs to the year 1424. Filippo 
Calendario is the Venetian architect whose name 
stands connected with several of the chief buildings 
of this time. He was engineer, sculptor, and director 
of public works all at once. But it seems that 
the two famous facades of the Palace, those facing 
respectively the lagoon and the Piazzetta, must 
not be attributed to him, as the highest Italian 
authorities in the history of art have proved that 
he was dead before the Palace was built. 

Let us pause a moment again at this name and 
personality of Filippo Calendario. There is a school 
of historical inquirers at Venice who pretend that 
he was not even an architect, but only a superin- 
tendent of works who put into execution the 
designs of others ; nevertheless he is represented 
as having promoted, in the measure of his power 
and length of days, the embellishments which we 
see still subsisting, and which are proved by docu- 
mentary evidence to belong strictly to that period, 



AKCHITFXTURE— ITS TRANSFORMATIONS. 143 

the fourteenth century, of which we are now speak- 
ing. Calendario was in the first instance a man 
of the sea, and probably a ship-builder ; his ha- 
bitual residence was the fortress of Marona. He 
rose gradually by the force of his own genius ; he 
studied in solitude ; abandoning the compass and 
ship-building tools for the architect's pencil, he 
produced after a time works so remarkable that 
his reputation reached the Senate, and whenever 
there was a question of building or repairing a 
public edifice, he was employed as consulting archi- 
tect to the State. A little later, called in due form 
to the Council, he made a complete design for St. 
Mark's Place, urged the Senate to schemes of archi- 
tectural display, and when, as wealth abounded, his 
ambitious scheme was accepted, he was named ^^ Capo 
Maestro del Palazzo pubblico,'' Chief Master of the 
Public Palace. That is the real title which he held ; 
but we shall be on the safe side in not aflSrmino: too 
positively that the conception of the palace was his 
own. The Doge Marino Faliero was so much Calen- 
dario's friend as to have recommended him warmly 
to the Signory, but the artist was not a man who 
spent all the fire of his nature upon the exercise 
of his art, or who stood aloof from political passions 
and interests. His was rather the ardent nature of a 
man ready to rush, dagger in hand, into the streets 
in defence of his own opinions or of the cause of his 
friends or patrons. The day when the Doge Faliero, 



144 VENICE. 

out of patience with the insolence of Michel 
StenOj formed that conspiracy against the nobility 
and the Council of Ten of which we have already 
told the tale, Calendario flung aside his art to espouse 
the cause of the Doge.* In the night of the 15th 
of April, 1354j the artist conspirator was sleeping 
peacefully in his house at San Severo, when Angelo 
Micheli, with a numerous company of men-at-arms, 
knocked suddenly and with violence at his door. 
Calendario understood at once that the enterprise 
had failed and that it was all over with him. He 
suffered himself without resistance to be led to the 
Ducal Palace, where the dreaded tribunal was sitting, 
and at the first question confessed his share in the 
conspiracy. He Avas hanged between the two red 
columns of the beautiful balcony of the Ducal Palace 
w^hich looks upon the Piazzetta. His father-in-law 
Israel Bertuccio suffered the same fate, and his son 
Nicolo, innocent as he was of all share in the con- 
spiracy, died in the State prisons. Thus, says the 

^ We have already told the story of Marino Faliero, his con- 
viction in 1354 of the crime of conspiracy against the State, and 
his beheading on the Giants' Staircase. The subject has been 
treated in two well-known pictures of the French school, one, by 
M. Robert Fleury, the painter of the "Conference of Poissy'' and 
of the picture of '* Charles V. at Santa Justa" which formerly 
belonged to the Marquis of Hertford and passed into the posses- 
sion of Sir Richard Wallace; the other by Eugene Delacroix, 
and in our opinion his best picture after the Massacre of Chios, 
which was long in the Pereira Gallery and is now in like manner 
the property of Sir Richard Wallace. 



ARCHITECTURE— ITS TRANSFORMATIONS. 145 

chronicler, perished a family of which a man of such 
high deserts was the head. 

What, then, is the part which Calendario really 
took in the building of the Ducal Palace, since it is 
denied that he was the architect of the existing 
facades? The original Palace, of which no traces 
now exist, had been raised by Pietro Orseola in the 
course of the twelfth century. It had not only been 
ravaged by fire, but had fallen into premature decay 
from its imperfect construction, so that it became 
necessary not to restore but to rebuild it. The idea 
was entertained as early as 1301 ; the Voting Hall 
was built, but Calendario was too young to have had 
any share in the operations then. By and by the 
magnificent hall of the Great Council was added ; 
but it has been proved by an unimpeachable author- 
ity in these matters, Cadorin, that at the date of this 
addition, from 1342 to 1349, the Director of Public 
Works was a certain Pietro Baseggio, a Venetian by 
birth. Baseggio at his death left the charge of the 
works to Filippo Calendario, who became his suc- 
cessor, and who, it is evident, had already had some 
connection with them and was an artist in high 
repute, having in some form or another been a valu- 
able coadjutor to Baseggio. Thus it seems that, 
so far as the Ducal Palace is concerned, Filippo will 
have been Baseggio's foreman or clerk of the works ; 
such, neither more nor less, was the extent of his 
co-operation. In 1424^ the Senate decreed the de- 

10 



146 VENICE. 

molition of the two old facades with a view to their 
rebuilding ; but Filippo had been dead and hanged, 
more is the pity, in 1354. Nevertheless his name 
has remained famous among all the cajn maestri of 
the fourteenth century. He must have been, we can 
see, the guiding spirit of all the architectural under- 
takings, the overseer and distributor of the tasks, 
whose part it was to prepare comprehensive schemes 
and to assign to sculptors and builders each his part 
in the construction of a great whole, of which every 
portion is a monument complete in itself, and suf- 
ficient to win fame for the hand that executed it. 

The name of another famous architect of that 
time has come down to us — that, namely, of Andrea 
Pisani, who conducted the works of enlargement at 
the arsenal under the Doge Gradenigo at the begin- 
ning of the fourteenth century. He has left the 
mark of his hand in a beautiful Gothic doorway 
which belongs to the system of towers destined to 
give shelter, at certain points of the wall, to the sen- 
tinels on night duty. 

In the modern arsenal of Venice it is a difficult 
matter to discover traces of the ancient construction. 
At the moment of writing I am fresh from a careful 
visit of examination paid to the institution in com- 
pany with the officer in command, the honorable 
Senator and Vice- Admiral Acton, who has done me 
the honors of the place with a courtesy for which I 
desire to thank him here. The enclosing wall 



AKCHITECTUEE— ITS TRAN8F0KMATI0NS. 147 

certainly bears the marks of the date when it was 
builtj and so far its architectural character is in 
accordance with the chronicles quoted by the 
learned Cicognara. A first enclosure had been 
built lOOlj under the Doge Ordelafo Faliero ; in 
1304 it was reconstructed with a more monumental 
character. The battlemented walls were flanked 
with fourteen small towers and had two gates com- 
municating with the lagoon. One of the sea-gates, 
the older of the two, stood in the same place where 
are now the two famous towers, painted red, of the 
Ponte del Paradiso ; the other was built later to 
facilitate the passage in and out for ships of war. 
It is closed by a monumental structure, a square 
tower of fine profile, in the upper part of which was 
placed the machinery for fixing the masts and hoist- 
ing the heavy guns on board vessels. 

The wall and towers, then, in spite of their evident 
marks of restoration, belong to the ancient structure. 
But the rest is fifteenth-century work, and the grand 
gate with the two lions regardant belongs, in its de- 
sign and arrangement, to 1440; its decoration is 
later ; the grading and statues, indeed, did not exist 
at the date (1579) when Giacomo Franco published 
his ^' View of the Entrance to the Arsenah" It was 
in that year only that Antonio da Ponte gave to this 
gate, called della tana^ the character which it still 
retains, and which was completed by the addition of 
the lions conveyed from Athens. 



148 VENICE. 

The Casa Doro, that famous palace on the Grand 
Canal^ belongs also to this period, and has been 
claimed by some as the work of Calendario. This 
palace belonged to Madame Taglioni — the ''' modern 
Terpsichore/' as the old-fashioned guides have it. 
She had it carefully restored, but inasmuch as the 
architect, for the exigencies of modern life, had 
permitted himself some slight modification on the 
ground-floor, the men of taste in Venice (and Venice 
numbers many men nurtured in the traditions of 
fine taste) expostulated in the journals of the day. 
Whence, you ask yourself, this name of Casa Doro, 
which some write d'Oro, as if the name was derived 
from the gildings, now devoured by time, which 
formerly adorned the front ? There was once in 
Venice a family of Doro, though it has been extinct 
for centuries, and hence more probably the derivation 
of the name. The building is in a Gothic style al- 
ready somewhat flamboyant and corrupt, but it must 
nevertheless be placed in the category which we are 
here considering, and which immediately precedes 
the Renaissance. We might, to be complete, quote 
further, as among the finest examples of the civil 
architecture of this period, the Palazzo Cozzi, that 
of the Giustiniani and Foscari, so fortunately placed 
at the bend of the Grand Canal ; the Palazzi Ber- 
nardo, Toppan, Cavalli ; the Palazzo Danieli, which 
has now become the most reputed hotel of Venice 
on the Riva, and the Palazzo Pisani at San Polo. 



ARCHITECTURE— ITS TRANSFORMATIONS. 149 

In a recent excursion among the ancient Venetian 
colonies of the Adriatic from the shores of the Istria 
as far as Albania, we found in all the towns of the 
coast beautiful specimens of Venetian Gothic archi- 
tecture. At Polo, at Parenzo, at Sebenico, at 
Spalato, at Eagusa itself, the open squares, built on 
the model of the Piazza of the mother city, bear 
the stamp of the Venetian style ; the bell-towers, 
built on a scale proportionable to those humbler but 
still graceful cities, carry the thoughts of the traveller 
to the Queen of the Adriatic, and the haughty lion 
sets the mark of his mighty paw on rampart and 
bastion. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

AKCHITECTUEE— THE RENAISSANCE PEEIOD. 

All Italy, from Venice to Palermo^ shared in 
that prodigious and many-sided effort of the human 
spirit which had its origin in the fifteenth century 
and its full development in the sixteenth, and which 
we know by the name of the Renaissance. And of 
all the cities in Italy, none bears more strongly than 
Venice the marks of this great movement, inspired 
as it was by the enthusiasm of those generations for 
the classic past, by the knowledge they had newly 
gained from the discovery of ancient manuscripts, 
by voyages to the shores of Greece, and by the 
publication of ancient writings hitherto unknown. 
For Venice — that half-Oriental State^ the mother 
of famous travellers and adventurous merchants, 
of patricians and magnificoes enriched by commerce 
— Venice had borne the foremost part of all in the 
discoveries of this age. She took an uncontested 
supremacy in the new art of printing, that strong 
disseminator of the acquisitions of the mind, and 
what was more than all, she possessed the wealth 
needed to put in execution the conceptions to which 

160 



ARCHITECTURE— THE RENAISSANCE. 151 

the spirit of the age gave birth within the minds of 
her artists. 

It is only with this latter aspect of the movement, 
with its influence upon the forms of architectural 
design^ that we are in this place concerned. I shall 
point out the principal examples in the city which 
illustrate this great artistic transformation. The ten 
Books of Architecture of Vitruvius^ which were 
brought to light in this period^ had no doubt the 
chief influence on the ideas of the time ; they found 
translators and commentators on all hands. Among 
books published at Venice alone there exists a whole 
literature on this subject. Among all that mass of 
difficult or almost impossible reading, the prolix, 
undigested^ blundering work of the early gropers in 
the subject, which is justly forgotten and neglected 
by all except collectors of rarities^ there are three 
men only whose writings have retained their value. 
These three are Alberti, Daniele Barbaro^ and 
Francesco Colonna; the first with his volume 
De lie cedificatoria^ the second in his Commentaries^ 
and the third in the Hypnerotomachia, a work more 
fantastic than instructive, of which we shall have 
more to say by and by. These three works all con- 
tributed much to bring back architecture to its 
antique origins, and to make known at Venice the 
precepts derived from the great Latin authority. 

To characterize in the simplest way possible the 
architectural transformation at Venice^ we may say 



152 VENICE. 

that it consisted in substituting for the elements of 
the Gothic style the antique elements of the column, 
the round arch, the architectural frieze and pediment, 
but with this singularity, that it retained in the 
structural design the same system as before, the 
same dispositions dictated by the needs, manners, 
customs, climate, temper and character of the Vene- 
tians. The new style freely appropriated the essen- 
tial elements of classical work ; the individual genius 
of the architect and of the artist who worked with 
him regulated the ornamental treatment in individual 
cases. Fairly enamored of antiquity, seized with a 
veritable idolatry for Greek and Eoman forms of 
the great periods, for the statues, the bronzes, the 
gems, the gold ornaments of the ancients, for those 
little masterpieces in terra-cotta discovered at Naxos, 
those Campanian vases, those gods and goddesses 
rescued from the bowels of the earth — admiring and 
idolizing all these things in the same degree as they 
admired and idolized the classic literature, the patri- 
cians of Venice could not admit that those who had 
been the greatest philosophers, the leaders of man- 
kind in the kingdom of thought, the peerless ora- 
tors, the inspired poets, the miracles of science and 
genius, had not also been sovereign architects, whose 
genius it behooved the modern world to make its own. 
Accordingly, as the art of any time reflects the ideas 
and influences of the time, it came about that the 
architects of Venice went to make studies in Greece^ 



AKCHITECTURE— THE RENAISSANCE. 153 

to measure the monuments of antiquity, to make 
and publish accurate drawings from them. Those 
admirable remains which exist at Pola, Parenzo, 
Spalato, and along all the shores of Istria and Dal- 
matian which were at that time colonies of Venice, 
became the objects of a universal enthusiasm. 
Serlio and Palladio published their studies of these 
monuments, and were followed by a host of imi- 
tators. For all that, it must not at the same time 
be supposed that the architects of the Renaissance 
were mere plagiarists of antiquity. First of all, as 
we have said, the wants of the two ages were differ- 
ent, and it was not in reason possible to apply the 
ancient forms literally to buildings absolutely differ- 
ent in plan. Next, the genius of the Venetian artists 
would not have lent himself to this servile function 
of the copyist. Never, in truth, did the imagination 
of men allow itself to be less hampered by the strict 
rules imposed by the masters of Rome and Athens. 
Those rules were a bridle, a check, but the great 
artists of the day launched, notwithstanding, with 
signal elasticity of genius, into the most original 
combinations. There resulted a transitional art 
which holds a special place of its own, and which, 
from the name of the artists who chiefly created it, 
is called in Venice the art of the "" Lombardi.'' 
Among the finest examples existing at Venice 
should be quoted the choir of the church of the 
Frarij of which we have repeatedly spoken already. 



154 VENICE. 

The work belongs to the year 1475^ and while it 
retains in part the Gothic expression, retains it in 
connection with Roman features. In sculpture — 
and this is an accomplishment altogether new, Avhich 
in course of time will be pushed to the extreme and 
lead on to decadence — in sculpture, the chisel at 
this time learns to care not merely for the outlines 
of the statue, but for the expression of life in the 
body, with its variety of surfaces and its breathing 
fabric of bones, nerves and muscles. The altar of 
the chapel of St. Peter in the same church of the 
Frari belongs also to this period ; but perhaps the 
most important example at Venice is the splendid 
gate of San Giovanni e Paolo facing the Canal. 
The Roman influence is perceptible and something 
more in the columns, friezes, and pediment. The 
gate has the general form of a parallelogram ; but 
its arch is still the Gothic arch : we are on the eve 
of the Renaissance proper. 

It was to the Dominicans before all others that 
the diffusion of classical knowledge at this period 
was due, and to the Dominicans also belong the 
most distinguished Renaissance architects of Venice. 
Among them it is just to quote that fantastic spirit 
Francesco Colonna, the author of the Dream of 
Foliphilo, or Hypnerotomacliia^ of which I have 
already spoken. Francesco Colonna was not him- 
self a builder, but the inspirer of other builders. 
Another Dominican, Fra Giocondo, was certainly 



Grand Canai, haiace Vcndramin Calergi 



AECHITECTURE— THE KENAISSANCE. 155 

tlie most famous Venetian arcliitect of his time. 
He was born at Verona in 1430 and entered the 
order at eighteen ; he carried on the study of an- 
tiquity during a long residence at Rome. By turns 
archaeologist^ man of letters, and architect, he pub- 
lished with a dedication to Lorenzo Magnifico a very 
learned manuscript in which he brought to light a 
number of ancient inscriptions. In 1496 he came 
to France, and published in that country, with a 
dedication to Louis XIL, the manuscript of the 
letters of Pliny the younger. He was entrusted 
with the building of the bridge of Notre Dame, 
which, notwithstanding repeated restorations, re- 
tained until a very recont time the main lines of its 
original construction. Vasari says that Fra Giocondo 
covered France with buildings commissioned by the 
king ; but these are vague phrases ; one building at 
least which can with certainty be ascribed to him is 
that masterpiece in its kind, the Chateau de Gaillon, 
which has been saved in our own generation from 
total destruction by being proposed as a model to 
young artists. Its fagade proves that^ steeped as 
Fra Giocondo was in classical precedent, he had 
nevertheless preserved his artistic independence, 
and combined his forms without too scrupulous a 
regard for Vitruvius. For the rest, the famous and 
marvellous palace of the Council on the Piazza della 
Signoria at Verona, one of the most perfect buildings 
in Europe and a model of strength, grace and 



156 VENICE. 

elegance, gives the full measure of his genius at its 
best. In 1516, the Venetian Senate^ jealous of see- 
ing a citizen of the Republic devote talents so con- 
spicuous to foreign service, recalled the master and 
put him at the head of certain engineering works of 
great importance^ the construction, namely, of the 
canals of the Brenta and Bretona. 

Thus the architecture of the fifteenth and six- 
teenth centuries has its source in antiquity. Thus 
Pietro, Tullio, Sante, Martino, Antonio, and Moro 
Lombardi — the members of that extraordinary 
family, with their hereditary genius — thus Antonio 
ScarpagninOj Bartolomeo Buono, Giovanni Giocondo, 
Antonio Eizzo^ Alessandro Leopardi, Jacopo Colon- 
na, Guglielmo Bergamesco, all really drew the best 
of their inspiration from ancient sources ; but at the 
same time, like the poet Avho is said to have set 
modern thoughts to ancient verse, they were all full 
of the special temper, needs, and predilections of 
their time ; they were not imitators but creators, and 
out of the antique elements they fashioned a style 
which was altogether Italian, Venetian, and their 
own. 

The mark left by the family of the Lombardi was 
such that the name of ^^ Architettura Lombardesca" 
was given to the style of the period in general. 
Venice is full of their work. The Palazzo Ven- 
dramin-Calergi is the work of Sante Lombardi ; the 
Palazzo dei Camerlenghi del Comune^ that admirable 



AECHITECTUKE— THE RENAISSANCE. 157 

building which stands on the left of the Rialto as 
yoa go to the railway^ is by Guglielmo Bergamesco. 
The Giants' Staircase of the Ducal Palace is by 
Antonio Rizzo, and the whole art of the brothers 
Lombardi is concentrated in the wonderful church 
of Nostra Donna dei Miracoli^ the most exquisite^ 
dignified and purest in design of all the churches in 
Venice^ and for severity with grace worthy to rank 
beside the finest monuments of antiquity. The 
interior of the basilica of San Salvatore is by Tullio 
Lombardi. The Scuola di San Rocco^ close to the 
church of the Frari, is a fine specimen of the same 
style designed by Scarpagnino. The impetuous 
genius of Tintoret can only be studied in this build- 
ingj within which he has accumulated works too 
numerous for the life-time of any other artist ; here 
he has determined to create as it were a sanctuary 
from which his fame should go forth as from a 
centre ; and here accordingly he has been careful to 
paint his own portrait over the door of one of the 
chambers. 

The sack of Rome by the Constable de Bourbon 
had also its influence at Venice. At Rome the 
Italian Renaissance was nearer to its ancient sources, 
and had followed the ancient rules more scrupulously. 
After the sack, a number of artists and men of 
letters took refuge at Venice, which was then at the 
height of glory in the arts. Among these was Fatti, 
known as II Sansovino, an architect and sculptor at 



158 VENICE. 

once, and one of the greatest of tlie artists whose 
genius has added lustre to the city ; the masterwork 
by which he is recommended to posterity is the 
Libreria Vecchia. Then came Palladio, to whom 
are dae the churches of the Redentore, San Giorgio 
Maggiore, San Francesco della Vigna, and many 
others. He was a strict observer of the Vitruvian 
rules, and only at the last disengaged himself so far 
as to give proof of an originality which some have 
denied him altogether. After Palladio, again, this 
prolific epoch produces Nicolo da Ponte, of whom 
we spoke at some length in connection with the 
Rialto ; then again Sammicheli, a very distinguished 
artist whose special province was military architec- 
ture. Reaching maturity at the time when San- 
sovino was already old, he takes the first rank in the 
following period, and his special attainment does not 
prevent him from excelling also in civil architecture, 
since some of his compositions in this kind, such as 
San Andrea del Lido, the Pellegrini chapel at the 
church of San Bernadino at Verona, the Griraani 
and the Corner palaces, may take rank as models of 
art. In a recent tour in Dalmatia we saw whole 
towns fortified by Sammicheli ; thus at Zara, not 
content with making his dispositions like a skilful 
military engineer, he has also chosen to set upon 
these stern structures the stamp of art, and has made 
of his bastions first-rate examples of the robust 
architecture of the Renaissance^ both by the compo- 



ARCHITECTUEE— THE RENAISSANCE. 159 

sition of the general lines and by elegance of mould- 
ing and detail. The land-gate of Zara is a master- 
piece ; and in general these Venetian colonies in 
Dalmatia owe to Sammicheli much of the interest 
which they still possess for the traveller. 

After these matters^ we reach the beginning of 
the decadence in the person of Scamozzi. To him 
is due the change made in the character of San- 
sovino's admirable Libreria Vecchia by its continua- 
tion along the northern side of the Piazza and the 
addition of an order to the height ; this new order is 
heavy and injurious to the general effect. The 
Palazzo Contarini is regarded as his finest work. 

From Scamozzi it is a still further fall to Bar- 
tolommeo Longhena in the seventeenth century. 
Longhena was still a man of genius^ and his church 
of the Salute is one of the most celebrated in the 
town, and to the traveller the most striking after St. 
Mark's ; there is an effect which cannot be forgotten 
about its general aspect^ its lofty bulb-shaped domes 
of a silvery-gray color buttressed with reversed con- 
soles. In combination with the pinnacle of the 
Dogana, with its golden ball surmounted by the 
figure of Fortune and blazing with sunlight in the 
foreground, this church of Longhena's, albeit a work 
of the decadence, takes its place admirably at the 
entrance to the canal, and forms as it were a pro- 
logue in perfect keeping Avith the spectacle to be 
unfolded before the traveller^ as he glides in his 



160 VENICE. 

gondola between the double line of palaces from the 
entrance of the lagoon to the railway station. It is 
well known that the Eepublic decreed the erection 
of this church of Our Lady of Safety in commemo- 
ration of the deliverance of the city from a great 
pestilence. Longhena, to whom the commission was 
given by the Senate^ proceeded to set the stamp of 
his age upon the building, and made it one of the 
richest churches in existence for the splendor of its 
marbles, gold, and general materials. There was 
something of an incontestable nobility about this 
artist ; err in taste as he may, yet in power of con- 
ception he fairly belongs to the race of Brunelleschi, 
Bramante, and Buonarroti. Like all artists who 
care more for the conception than the form of their 
works, he saw his pupils and successors exaggerate 
his own failings. Such was the case of the Tirali, 
the Bernardino, and the Macaruzzi. Among these 
architects of the decadence must not be forgotten 
Giuseppe Benoni, who built the Dogana or Custom 
House. This singular monument, which rises in the 
immediate neighborhood of the church of the Salute, 
at the extreme point between the lagoon and the 
Grand Canal, is one of the most original of the time, 
and illustrates the remark that to an architectural 
fabric, whatever its destination, the Venetians in- 
sisted on giving a monumental character, since even 
that part of the edifice destined for shops is not 
without its artistic stamp and grandeur. 



AKCHITECTURE— THE RENAISSANCE. 161 

The most interesting architect among those of 
comparatively recent times is certainly Scalfarotto, 
to whom is due the church of St. Simon the Apostle. 
Then comes Tommaso Temanza^ the author of Lives 
of the Italian Arehiteets, who held the post of Direc- 
tor of Public Buildings under the Republic. He 
built the round church of the Magdalene^ and trained 
some good pupils^ among others Giannantonio Salva, 
who built the Fenice theatre^ an enormous hall 
admirably planned for acoustical purposes, but 
unluckily destitute of fa9ade. He was also the 
architect of the church of Gesii, by no means a 
commonplace edifice though it has the cold regular- 
ity of the period. The architects last named can 
scarcely be called in any especial sense Venetian. 
Before their time the national genius was exhausted ; 
that brilliant fancy, that union of strength and grace^ 
that quick and free intelligence which adapts ancient 
forms to modern needs^ and stamps with a special 
character of its own a style of architecture which^ if 
not universal, had become the adopted style of 
almost all European countries — -all this was lost 
before now. The Renaissance had been followed by 
the Baroque ; the Baroque in its turn by a pedantic 
classicism devoid of grace, life^ and individuality,—- 
until at last it seemed as if enfeeblement had over- 
taken even the studies of archaeology, and the 
restorers of ancient structures show tliemselves in 
their restorations both inexact and dull. Last of all 
11 



162 VENICE. 

the Republic falls, the French take possession ; the 
ruin is accomplished^ and such is the power of the 
French Empire that even the architectural style of 
its predilection has influence in Italy and at Venice 
itself. There rise, indeed, no more public edifices ; 
Venice lies in sadness and chains, and when, in yet 
later years, she becomes an Austrian prefecture, we 
shall see the Grerman style of such buildings as date 
from the rule of the Emperors Joseph and Francis 
forming a painful contrast to the proud concep- 
tions of the Leopardi, the Lombardi, and the Sam- 
micheli. We cannot but honor the pious sentiment 
which dictated the erection of a monument to Titian 
beside the other sepulchral monuments of the Mali- 
pieri, the Giustiniani, the Bragadini, and Marco 
Sanudo ; but for the architectural expression which 
this sentiment received it is impossible to feel any 
admiration ; indeed, this tomb erected by Ferdinand 
I. for the prince of Venetian painters is of a style 
so cold, impotent, and characterless, that the heart 
of an artist feels chill within him as he looks upon 
it. You think of that age of glory when art was in 
the very air, and when a high tradition served 
instead of genius even to men of inferior gifts ; and 
you ask yourself by what privilege it is that one age 
concentrates all greatness in itself, while those that 
follow, exhausted as it were by the exuberant pro- 
duction and lavish spiritual expenditure of the past, 
can yield no fruits but such as are ill-shapen, savor- 



AKCHITECTURE— THE RENAISSANCE. 163 

less and shrivelled. That indefinable quality of art 
which is called character will disappear ; the laws 
of harmony will be broken ; and when at the begin- 
ning of our own century the Venetians attempt to 
continue the work of Sansovino on St. Mark's Place 
facing the Basilica^ they will no longer be able to 
copy it with any fidelity to its spirit, and will set 
such an incongruous finish upon the facade as that 
strange attic which we see there to-day. 

Venice herself, however, will not lose that cha- 
racter which is hers. The law which presided over 
her building preserves her from too lamentable mis- 
chief; palaces may be modified according to the 
fancy of their possessors ; but one municipality after 
another will have respect enough for the past and its 
glories to avoid taking any of those deplorable reso- 
lutions which permanently destroy the very traces 
of its monuments. Step by step, year by year, 
century by century, it will still be possible to trace 
out the history of the city. Her inscriptions will be 
left intact, and to her State museums will be piously 
transported such remains of her sculpture and archi- 
tecture as may serve to guide the studies of the 
artist, the archaeologist, and the historian. That 
great living museum of Venice will remain erect and 
almost scatheless, the honor of Italy, the stately 
memorial of a past most full of greatness, the 
splendid witness of the majesty of the Queen of the 
Adriatic. 



CHAPTEE IX. 

THE EIALTO. 

RiALTOj one of the most familiar names of modern 
Venice, is the one that, with the Lido, recurs often- 
est in her history and in her popular songs. At 
first, the point at which the Rialto rears itself was 
the heart of Venice ; it was one of those islets of 
the group which afterward were to constitute the 
town itself (Rivo-Alto) ; the Rialto, as the ancient 
chroniclers call it, is used for a general designation 
of the site of the citj. For a long time the only 
bridge thrown across the Grand Canal, serving as a 
means of communication between the two great 
groups of islands which that canal divides, was the 
bridge of the Rialto. From time immemorial (at 
least from the twelfth century) there was a wooden 
foot-bridge there continually renewed until the day 
when the Signory, determined to bring the Rialto 
into harmony with the stately buildings of the city, 
decided to invite for that purpose the greatest archi- 
tects and engineers of the time. 

I have had the curiosity to look for the portfolios 
relating to the Rialto among the Venetian archives. 
The documents, which are extremely numerous^ do 

164 



THE EI ALTO. 165 

not go back farther than the beginning of the six- 
teenth century, and give the most interesting details 
on the construction of the bridge as it now exists, 
with original papers enough to make it possible to 
write the history of that construction. For all that 
concerns the state of the building, or the history of 
the spot itself before the sixteenth century, recourse 
must be had to the Venetian chroniclers, and first 
of all to Sansovino. It is thought that from the 
eighth century the necessity was felt for a more 
rapid mode of passage between the groups of islands 
than could be had by boats, and that, at a period 
which naturally remains uncertain but which must 
have been contemporary with the building of St. 
Mark's, a bridge was made at the Rialto composed 
of flat boats called soleole. 

In 1180, an engineer whose name, Barattieri, has 
been preserved, made a permanent bridge of this 
temporary one ; and in 1260, the system of boats 
being definitively given up, piles were driven in, 
and abutments were constructed to carry a wooden 
drawbridge, not a stone bridge as some, historians 
have said. This is the bridge we see represented 
in the famous picture of Carpaccio, ^^ The Patriarch 
of Grado healing One possessed by an Evil Spirit," 
which is in the Academy of Venice. In 1310, on the 
occasion of the conspiracy of Bajamonte Tiepolo, at 
the moment when the conspirators were about to take 
possession of the Ducal Palace, they found St. Mark's 



166 VENICE. 

Place guarded ; precipitately flying to the other side 
of the canal, they cut the bridge behind them to 
make sure of escaping. After this the bridge had 
of course to be rebuilt at once, but the work was 
done too hurriedly ; and little more than a century 
later, on the occasion of the marriage of the Duke 
of Ferrara, the rejoicings were so tumultuous that 
the bridge gave way under the crowd, and serious 
injuries resulted. This being the only passage, it 
was too useful to remain long interrupted } and for 
the broken bridge there was substituted a bulky 
structure filled up with shops on either side of the 
footway, and with a water-passage left sufficient for 
large boats. 

It is very interesting to see the exact aspect of 
the Rialto of that time in the admirable picture of 
Carpaccio which I have just mentioned ; we have 
here an invaluable piece of evidence for the history 
of Venetian architecture. One might have thought 
this restored building would be permanent ; but any 
one who knows Venice and her history will under- 
stand that the perpetual traffic necessitated a still 
more substantial construction. The Fondaco dei 
Tedeschi rises on the right, the palaces of Camer- 
lenghi on the left ; the Fahhriche nuove^ and the 
jewellers who have their shops there, and the fish 
and vegetable sellers who are collected on either bank, 
occasion such continual going and coming that a 
very strong bridge is required to withstand the wear 



THE ETALTO. 167 

and tear. From 1525 nothing was heard on all sides 
but complaints about the precarious condition of this 
indispensable bridge ; and the promise of a really 
durable structure began to make itself heard. Till 
1587 nothing was done ; Fra Giocondo^ the designer 
of Gaillon and the bridge of Notre Dame, had once 
planned a bridge for the Rialto ; so had Palladio in 
his turn ; at last, on the 6th of December, 1587, the 
Senate invited a competition. As usual in Venice, a 
commission of inquiry was nominated, composed of 
three personages, all senators, whose especial task 
was to collect information and look for the anterior 
plans signed by Giorgio Spaventi, Fra Giocondo, 
Scarpa Guino, Jacopo Sansovino, Andrea Palladio, 
Jacopo Barroccio da Vignola, and, it is said, by the 
great Michelangelo. 

The best of all proofs of the truth of the asser- 
tion that Michelangelo made a plan for the bridge, 
is furnished by the subject of a painting which 
adorns the Casa Buonarroti at Florence and which 
represents ^^ Michelangelo, received with honor by 
the Doge Andrea Gritti, presents to him a drawing 
for the Bridge of the Rialto.'^ 

Out of twenty-four plans of architects and engi- 
neers the committee pointed out to the Senate and 
Grand Council the three which seemed to them most 
worthy of notice, those of Scamozzi, Antonio da 
Ponte, and Albisio Baldu. The work was entrusted 
to Da Ponte ; it took three years to build, and cost 



168 VENICE. 

the sum of two hundred and fifty thousand ducats, 
or thirty thousand pounds of our money, which at 
that time was a considerable sum. Sansovino says 
that ten thousand piles of elm timber would have 
to be driven in to a depth of sixteen feet ; a large 
galley armed should be able to pass under the key- 
stone of the arch with lowered mast, and withal the 
height of the bridge should not be great enough to 
render the communication between the two quarters 
of the town difficult. 

The platform of the bridge is about twenty-four 
metres in length ; it is reached by an easy ascent of 
steps, and is wide enough to hold a row of shops 
under arcades, so that it is in reality a suspended 
street, as full of life as a market. The central 
arcade is left clear and forms an open gallery over 
the keystone of the bridge ; between the parapet 
and the shops runs a balustraded passage carried on 
strongly projecting corbels. The span of the arch 
is twenty-seven metres fifty centimetres, and its rise, 
from the usual level of the waters of the Grand 
Canal, measures seven metres. 

The traveller who delights to linger on St. Mark's 
Place, in the Basilica, at the Ducal Palace, in the 
museums and churches, should also halt long and 
often at the Rialto. This is a corner with a charac- 
ter quite its own ; here crowd together, laden with 
fruit and vegetables, the black boats that come from 
the islands to provision Venice, the great hulls ladeu 



Bridgfe of the Rialto and the Grand Canal 



THE EIALTO. 169 

with cocomeriy angurie^ with gourds and watermelons 
piled in mountains of color ; there the gondolas 
jostle, and the gondoliers chatter like birds in their 
Venetian idom ; there too are the fishermen in their 
busy, noisy, black-looking market, an assemblage 
of strange craft and strange types of humanity ; and 
as a pleasant contrast, on the steps of the bridge 
and stopping before the jewellers' shops, are girls 
from the different quarters of Venice, from Cana- 
reggio, Dorso Duro, San Marco, and Santa Croce, 
and from every corner of the town, come to buy the 
colored handkerchiefs they deck themselves in, and 
jewellery of delicately- worked gold, or bright glass 
beads from Murano, or glass balls iridescent with 
green, blue and pink ; while, wrapped in old gray 
shawls and showing only their wrinkled profiles and 
silver locks, the old women of the Rialto drag their 
slippers up the steps, and glide among the crowd, 
hiding under the folds of their aprons the strange 
viands they have just bought from those keepers of 
open-air provision stalls who ply their trade on the 
approaches to the Kialto. 



CHAPTER X. 

VENETIAN SCULPTUKE— SEPULCHRAL MONUMENTS 
—BRONZES. 

= In this marvellous Venice, where each monument 
seems to claim a monograph which should be a vol- 
ume in itself, the churches, like our cathedrals, 
served as Pantheons for great men and as resting- 
places for the nobles, benefactors, and priests who 
had administered in them. A special part of our 
chapter on architecture should be devoted to sepul- 
chral monuments, for the art of the sculptor has 
nowhere given its measure so exactly as in these 
small structures, some of which are of exquisite deli- 
cacy, others ambitious, and so to speak tumultuous, 
in their design ; w4iile a third class, though limited 
in size, are of such noble proportions, so strong and 
pure in outline, that they constitute so many master- 
pieces in architecture, f" It may be affirmed that the 
patricians of Venice and the heroes of the Republic 
have the noblest and most beautiful funeral monu- 
ments in the world. Not Florence w^here the great 
Michelangelo reigns in all his glory, not Burgos, not 
Granada, not Rome herself, can rival Venice when 
it is a question of perpetuating the memory of a 
170 



VENETIAN SCULPTUKE. 171 

great man, or when the pride and ostentation of 
some noble would bequeath to posterity the memory 
of one of his ancestors. 

We must again adopt for these monuments the 
nomenclature which we have used for architecture : 
the Roman period, the Byzantine, the Gothic, the 
Renaissance, and lastly the Baroque, as they say in 
Venice — that is, the decadence in all its manifesta- 
tions, more or less creditable. 

All the churches contain tombs, and there are 
even some of slight pretensions in which are col- 
lected the ashes of the greatest citizens. Such and 
such a Doge, or Procurator, or Admiral of the Sea; 
Ducal Councillor or illustrious Ambassador, having 
lived in a certain quarter in Venice and patronized 
the modest chapel which stood near his palace, would 
desire that after his death his body should rest near 
the altar before which he had so often knelt. But 
the three great Pantheons of Venice are the Frari, 
San Giovanni e Paolo, and San Marco ; for this last 
— St. Mark's itself — had originally been used as a 
burial-place for the Doges, though the usage was 
early given up. 

The most ancient funeral monuments are preserved 
at the Frari and San Giovanni ; none of the first 
period exist, or at least the examples we possess are 
too fragmentary for study. Nor is there any inter- 
esting example of the Byzantine style ; and as the 
most important specimen of the Gothic period we 



172 VENICE. 

must take three early fourteenth-century tombs, all 
designed upon one motive, in the Frari. The image 
of the dead man lies on a sarcophagus under a Gothic 
dais carried on columns ; the monument is in each 
case fixed against the wall. The first sarcophagus 
contains the ashes of Arnoldo, a knight of the Teu- 
tonic order who died about 1300 ; another, important 
for the beauty of its sculpture, contains the remains 
of Duccio degP Alberti, ambassador of Florence 
when that city was in alliance with Venice in the 
war against the famous Mastino Cane, Lord of Ve- 
rona; the ambassador died about 1336 at Venice, 
and the Eepublic undertook the expenses of his 
funeral. 

At San Giovanni e Paolo, in the same form, that 
is to say with the statue recumbent on its bier and 
the Gothic dais, are to be seen the tombs of Jacopo 
Cavalli and the Doge Antonio Venier. Somewhat 
more simple, but of the same period, is that of Paolo 
Loredano, who together with Pietro Mocenigo suc- 
ceeded in crushing the rebellion in the island of 
Candia in 1365. One of the most famous Doges of 
all the Golden Book, Marco Cornaro, who died at 
eighty-two in 1367, also has his tomb in San Gio- 
vanni, adorned with five statues which may be attri- 
buted to the most distinguished Venetian sculptor of 
the Middle Ages. Besides Marco Cornaro rests the 
magnificent Michele Morosini, who died in 1382. 
In treading on a tombstone^ the natural desire of the 



VENETIAN SCULPTUKE. 173 

cultivated spirit is to know what was the life of him 
who lies beneath ; this Morosini had become dear to 
the Kepublic because^ hearing in the East, where he 
had gone for purposes of commerce, the present 
peril of the Venetian State in the great war against 
the Genoese, he had put up at auction all the mer- 
chandise and wealth he had amassed in trade, and 
sent the price to the Senate to help toward the ex- 
penditure of the war. 

We shall cite here only the tombs which bear the 
recumbent figure of the deceased carved on the sar- 
cophagus ; there exist two of this kind at St. Mark's, 
that of St. Isidore, which dates from 1350, and 
that of Andrea Dandolo in the chapel of the baptis- 
tery. In this one, the figure of the Doge laid upon 
the coffin is protected by a curtain held up by two 
angels. 

There are still a good many more specimens of 
this period, but as we advance we find that the nat-- 
ural idea of representing the deceased recumbent on 
his own tomb is given up. At San Giovanni e 
Paolo we find the tomb of Marco Giustiniani, who 
died in 1347, that of Andrea Morosini, and lastly 
those of Giovanni Dolfin and Pietro Cornaro, who 
died respectively in 1360 and 1361. We come to 
the fifteenth century with the splendid mausoleum 
erected to the Dogaressa Agnese Venier by her 
family in 1411. Tommaso Mocenigo, who died in 
1424, reposes in San Giovanni e Paolo ; and this 



1 74 TEXICE. 

example may be taken as illustrating the transition 
from the mediaeval to the first period of the Renais- 
sance. It must be noticed, to the honor of Venetian 
taste^ that never from the thirteenth to the fifteenth 
century, that is to say from the date of Byzantine 
influences to the Renaissance, did the work of their 
Gothic period become exaggerated or overloaded 
with ornament, or fall into that mistaken system 
which we observe in the flamboyant Gothic of 
Xorthem regions. Milan did not escape from that 
extravagance, witness its celebrated cathedral ; but 
this is not surprising when we consider that most of 
the aitists who took part in its ornamental sculptures 
were Germans. In the whole of Venice, the writers 
and chroniclers who serve us as guides in architec- 
ture can only cite three or four examples of the in- 
fluence of this style : and these are. at St. Mark's, 
the two tabernacles decorated with marbles to the 
right of the choir where the lamps hung, and before 
which kneels the crowd of the faithful : at San Zac- 
caria, three altar fronts carved in wood; which were 
made as a setting for the precious works of Giovanni 
and Antonio of Murano in 14-1:5 ; lastly, at the 
Frari, a Gothic wood-carving against the wall near 
the lateral door. 

We must make mention also, in speaking of the 
sepulchral monuments of Venice, of those tomb- 
stones of the Middle Ages which, taking the form of 
slabs let into the church pavements, furnish examples 



VENETIAN SCULPTURE. 175 

of an art much more limited in scope than that 
which we have considered above^ but far from being 
without interest. The greater number of such slabs^ 
which belong to the fourteenth and to the beginning 
of the fifteenth centuries, alike in France, in Eng- 
lish Gothic cathedrals, or in the churches of Venice, 
bear in bas-relief the likeness of the dead in his 
military or religious attire. At San Giorgio Mag- 
giore may be seen that which covers the remains of 
Bonincontro de Boaterii of Bologna, Bishop of Tor- 
cello, who died in 1380. Sculptured in bas-relief, 
the figure of the bishop is represented in his episco- 
pal robes and pointing to the holy Scriptures with his 
finger ; the period is distinctly indicated by the 
Gothic pointed arch which rises over his head. In 
the same church of San Giorgio Maggiore, another 
memorial slab of the same style covers the remains 
of Tommaso Tommasini, Bishop of Feltre, who died 
in 1446, and another at Santa Maria delF Orto, those 
of the sculptor Giovanni di Sanctis. 

With regard to funeral monuments, it may be con- 
cluded that this period of architecture, beginning in 
1300, lasted a century and a half at Venice, and 
until 1450 it remains free from all mixture of styles. 
It is in the ornamentation that the characteristics 
are easy to seize ; there is, for sepulchral purposes, 
the simple Gothic style of which the features are 
purely architectural — the pointed arch, the dwarf 
column, the trefoil pattern^ and some scanty band or 



176 VENICE. 

frieze of decoration for the dais ; there is, next^ the 
elaborated Gothic in which sculpture plays a great 
part beside architecture, and the design is enriched 
with all the resources which floral forms suggest to 
the decorative carver. But in each variety alike, 
the Italian Gothic remains unmistakably Italian and 
national; it has its own stamp and character; in ac- 
cepting this style for a hundred and fifty years, just 
as they had formerly accepted the Byzantine, the 
artists of Italy, whether they borrowed it from the 
North, according to the common opinion, or whether, 
as Selvatico maintains, from the Arabian Khalifs, at 
all events impress it to a great extent with their 
own individuality. 

The sepulchral monument of the Doge Vendramin, 
in the church of San Giovanni e Paolo, serves ad- 
mirably to open the series of works of this style 
which must be classed as belonging to the Renais- 
sance. The work is by Leopardi, who lived towards 
the end of the fifteenth century, and was then 
already at the zenith of his talent. This Leopardi, 
to whom later we shall devote a separate chapter, 
was a metal-founder; the admirable pedestals of the 
masts which still stand before the doorway of St. 
Mark's, and from which floated the standards of the 
Republic, are of his workmanship. One of the cha- 
racteristic features of the Renaissance is the versa- 
tility of talent among its artists ; this Leopardi was 
by profession a founder j it was he who cast the 



VENETIAN SCULPTURE. 177 

celebrated statue of Colleoni^ on the piazza San 
Giovanni e Paolo^ of which the famous Andrea 
Verrocchio was the sculptor ; but notwithstanding 
this mechanical vocation he showed himself great 
enough as an artist to be entrusted both with the 
design and execution of the famous candelabra of the 
Academy ; with the tomb of Vendramin, which is 
really not a tomb but an entire monument complete 
in all its parts and arrangements ; with the direction 
of the construction of St. Giustina of Padua^ and 
with a considerable number of works of a nature to 
demand at once the knowledge of the architect, the 
sculptor, and the painter, not to speak of his tech- 
nical specialty. At the same time that he was 
casting the horse for the Colleoni statue, Leopardi 
was also carving the exquisite pedestal upon which 
it rises in all its glory ; and neither the Lombardi, 
nor Bergamesco, nor Antonio Rizzo could surpass him 
for skill of arrangement, admirable taste in distribu- 
tion, mastery of execution, and science of modelling. 
This sepulchral monument of the Doge Yen- 
dramin is perhaps one of the purest works of 
Venice ; as regards taste it has all the nobility and 
grace of the antique, with a reticence, a reserve, 
and a purity in the cast of the drapery which is 
perhaps even beyond Greek art, hazardous though 
such a judgment may seem. The science of propor- 
tion has reached its highest point ; and it is impos- 
sible, among the pompous and disorderly composi- 

12 



178 VENICE. 

tions of the eighteenth century, of which we shall 
speak later on, and the dry designs of earlier cen- 
turies, not to be carried away by uncontrollable 
admiration for the prodigious period in which a man 
of genius, being by trade a working founder, was 
capable of designing such a masterpiece, of superin- 
tending and following out its execution, and working 
as a sculptor at his own architectural design, adorn- 
ing it with a world of figures, allegorical statues, 
patrician portraits, theological virtues, images of the 
Virgin and Saints, symbols and chimeras which 
harmonize so well with the mass that we feel one 
thought and one genius have inspired the monument, 
which is the work no less of one single hand. A 
certain Lorenzo Bregno, at the beginning of the 
sixteenth century, erected at the Frari some funeral 
monuments which are worthy of attention ; among 
these we count that of Benedetto Pesaro, one of the 
commanders of the naval and military forces of the 
Republic, who died in 1510, and was buried in this 
church. This is again another example of the grand 
style of the sepulchral monuments of the Renais- 
sance ; architecture and sculpture have combined to 
make nothing short of a triumphal arch of this 
tomb, in which all the emblems showing the charac- 
ter of the great captain are found united. At San 
Giovanni e Paolo, again, this same Lorenzo Bregno, 
with more animation but much less correctness of 
design than the Lombardi and Leopardi, has also 



VENETIAN SCULPTURE. 179 

erected the monument of Luigi Naldo da Briseghellaj 
General of Infantry to the Eepublic, who dis- 
tinguisljed himself in many battles during the league 
of Cambray, and died in 1510. We may also men- 
tion an admirable sarcophagus in the same church, 
that of Pasquale Malipiere, and among those of the 
purest style, the monuments of Matteo Giustiniani, 
Bartolomeo Bragadino, Michel Steno, Giovanni 
Battista, Boncio, and Girolamo Canale. 

At San Fantino, in the same style and of the 
same period (1517), is the monument of Vinciguerra 
Dandolo ; at San Zaccaria, the church which was 
built by the Lombardi and has one of the finest 
fagades of the Renaissance, the same in which lies 
the great sculptor Alessandro Vittoria, is also to be 
seen the monument of Marco Sanudo, that miracle 
of eloquence and learning. It is thought that this 
tomb may be attributed to the Leopardi. 

At San Stefano is buried Suriano, a celebrated 
physician, and this tomb, although of the purest 
Renaissance time, shows the great practitioner lying 
on his sepulchre in the manner of the earlier stjle. 
Jacopo Marcello, Admiral of the Sea, who died 
under the walls of Gallipoli in 1484 ; Generosa 
Orsini, wife of Luca Steno, Procurator of St. Mark ; 
Melchior Trevisani the great Captain, conqueror of 
the Duke of Milan at Cremona, who died in 1500 
of grief, having failed in the taking of Modena ; 
lastly Pasqualigo Brugnolo the great Professor, 



180 VENICE. 

who died in 1505, and Pietro Bernardo, all have 
their tombs in tlie Frari. These tombs, all more 
or less richj all more or less beautiful in form, 
belong without exception to the period of the 
Renaissance, and show at what stage the art of 
ornamental sculpture had arrived in Venice at the 
beginning of the sixteenth centurv. 

From the thirteenth century down to this time, 
this art of sepulchral architecture and decoration 
had been kept within very sober limits, even for 
occasions the most important, and when the memory 
to be celebrated was that of a citizen no matter how 
great by birth. Generally the monument consists 
of a stone coffin or sepulchral urn, more or less 
ornate, sometimes protected by an arch thrown over 
it ; this is carried on a projecting cornice, of which 
the weight rests on consoles or console-like figures 
of crouching men or animals, and its decoration con- 
sists of friezes, scrolls and bas-reliefs. If the tomb 
is a very rich one, and engaged in the wall of the 
church, it will be a representation, as it were, in 
relief, of a complete monument in the round, and 
wdll be composed of a base or sustaining member, 
an order of columns, or sometimes tw^o such orders 
one above another, and each intercolumniation will 
be recessed with niches filled with emblematic per- 
sonages or figures of saints. The urn, in such cases, 
reposes under a stately arch ; and above the centre 
of that arch, crowning the whole composition like 



Monument of Jacopo Marceiio, Church of 
Santa Maria de' Frari 



VENETIAN SCULPTURE. 181 

the apex of a pyramid, will rise most likely the 
statue of the deceased hero, doge, or captain. But 
the later we come down, the greater grows the pomp, 
the pride, the exuberance, the artist's extravagance 
and caprice, of which these monuments bear the 
evidence. One of the first examples of this deca- 
dence is the monument of Grazio Baglioni at San 
Giovanni e Paolo^ constructed in the first half of the 
seventeenth century. Let us glance for a while at 
this period, which has received, after the Italians 
themselves, the denomination of Baroccio or Ba- 
roque. 

The author of a well-known work, V Architecture 
et la Sciil-ptitre a Venise deptiis le moyen age jusqu'^a 
nos jours J holds that a very fatal influence was ex- 
ercised by the equestrian statue of Colleoni on the 
Piazza San Giovanni e Paolo. In truth I fail to 
understand how a work of such admirable beauty 
can have been injurious to the cause of art ; what I 
suppose the author to mean is rather that, as this 
kind of pompous representation did not always bear 
a strict proportion to the deserts of the person rep- 
resented, and did not remain an isolated example 
justified by the transcendent claims of the subject, 
so the sepulchral art of Venice declined by degrees 
into the pretentious and absurd, and monuments 
both ambitious and tasteless came to be erected in 
honor of personages insignificant enough. In the 
first instance^ Gattamelata having his equestrian 



182 VENICE. 

statue by Donatello on the Piazza at Padua, that 
brilliant capitano di guerra known as Colleoni must 
needs follow suit and have his in like manner (for it 
is an entertaining fact which posterity is apt to 
overlook, that the monument was due to the care of 
the hero himself). After these two really illustrious 
precedents, every soldier of fortune in the service 
of the Republic insisted that his e&igy should be 
carved on horseback on his monument or tomb. 
This fashion was out of harmony with the sober 
style of the earlier monuments ; it soon broke up 
the severity of their architectural lines ; and by and 
by the altitude at which such monuments were 
placed, the insufficiency of the space, the cramped 
dimensions of the pedestal, the necessity of showing 
that colossal horse foreshortened in perspective — all 
these conditions combined in the degeneracy of the 
taste to produce an art picturesque indeed, but 
nevertheless an art of the decadence. 

From this time the funeral monuments of Venice 
can no longer be quoted as works of art to be either 
imitated or admired. No doubt their materials are 
rich and their general aspect sumptuous ; but there 
is an extravagance of fancy almost amounting to 
delirium in these immense '^ machines,'' as the 
French say, of which the most singular type is the 
Pesaro monument in the Frari. Human pride 
breaks away from all bounds, and must have nothing 
short of the sepulchres of Babylon. Longhena^ the 



VENETIAN SCULPTUKE. 183 

architect of the church of La Sahite^ puts his con- 
siderable talent at the service of those patricians 
who think more of the glory of their grandchildren 
than of that of their ancestors^ and who dedicated to 
them a sepulchre carved in the rarest and most 
costly marbles. The last tomb worth quoting is 
that of the famous historian^ Paolo Paruta, at the 
Spirito Santo ; this again may safely be identified 
as designed by Longhena in the second quarter of 
the seventeenth century. 

Hitherto we have spoken of Venetian sculpture 
exclusively as applied to tombs ; and in truth it is a 
part and parcel of these splendid monuments which 
they adorn that the choicest sculptures of that 
school have to be sought and studied. Nevertheless 
a school of sculpture independent and properly so 
called did exist at Venice ; inspired at first by 
the Florentines^ it developed itself and reached its 
highest point in the hands of the Lombardi and 
Leopardi ; it became pompous, elegant^ and man- 
nered in those of Vittoria and of Giralamo Cam- 
pagna^ who lived from 1552 to 1623^ and was the 
sculptor of the statue of the Doge Loredano, the 
statues of the chapel of the Rosary at San Giovanni 
e Paolo, those which decorate the spandrels of the 
great arch of the Rialto Bridge, those of the altar 
of San Giorgio Maggiore and a great number of 
others for the most part scattered in various 
churches. To these great artists we propose giving 



184 VENICE. 

a special chapter. Let us here take a hasty survey 
of their successors, who instead of maintaining the 
great tradition went from worse to worse until the 
last decadence of their art. 

Giulio del Moro was a pupil and successor of 
Campagna ; to him are due the tombs of the Doges 
Priuli and Delfin in the church of San Salv^atore ; 
he was versed in all the arts, and signs his monu- 
ments with ostentation, thus : '' Julius Maurus 
Veronensis, sculptor, pictor, et architectus." 

When at the beginning of the seventeenth century 
that high-flying artist Longhena constructs his mon-' 
uments with an audacity of design approaching the 
sublime, but with the most extravagant taste in the 
details, it is natural that other sculptors should carry 
the same movement farther yet ; nor are Matteo 
Carnero and Alessandro Tremignan, the builder of 
the church of San Mose, the men to restrain these 
incontinences of the chisel. The cavalier Bernini 
seems to have become the ideal model and example, 
and toward the middle of the seventeenth century 
the representative sculptors of Venice are such men 
as Clemente Moli, Marchio Barthel, Alberto de 
Brule, Camillo Mazza, Pietro Baratta, Giovanni 
Marchioni, Antonio Corradini, and Andrea Brus- 
tolon, who carried to a great length the art of wood- 
carving and may be regarded as the inventor of 
rococo furniture in its most extravagant forms. 

Giuseppe Torretti and Alvisio Tagliapietra — of 



VENETIAN SCULPTUEE. 185 

whose workmanship are the bas-reliefs, '^ The Puri- 
fication '^ and '' The Presentation '' (chapel of the 
Eosarj in San Griovanni e Paolo) — were the last 
distinguished sculptors of the city ; they lived in 
the first half of the eighteenth century, and, for all 
the corruption of their taste, they must be granted 
an unsurpassable dexterity of hand ; they play with 
the marble, and have the very trick of reality, like 
our coquettish painters of the same period, in the 
representation of fabrics and texture. 

Nearer our own time, Canova was born at Pos- 
sagno. He was nursed, so to speak, on the knees 
of the followers of Bermini, Algardi, Tagliapietra, 
and Torretti ; nay, he was actually a pupiPs pupil of 
the last ; but he had in him some of the hard and 
quiet determination of the painter David ; he turned 
toward antiquity with obstinate singleness of view. 
From whatever point of view we judge this sculp- 
tor — though we realize the dry technical manner of 
his chisel, and by no means share the strange en- 
thusiasm of Stendhal for his powers — nevertheless 
we cannot but acknowledge that he sometimes rose 
to the high places of art ; he was capable of ex- 
pressing grace, modesty, distinction ; some few even 
of his compositions bear the stamp of sublimity 
which is the sign of an artist of noble strain. His 
birth in Venetian territory is an honor for the State. 



CHAPTER XL 

THE LOMBAKDI FAMILY. 



PIETKO LOMBAEDO. 

PlETRO is the head of that dynasty of artists, the 
glory of Venice^ who, from the middle of the fif- 
teenth century to the beginning of the seventeenth, 
transmitted genius one to the other like some legal 
inheritance. The cradle of the family was in some 
rural district of Lombardy ; its first scene of dis- 
tinction, the town of Ravenna. A minute inspec- 
tion of the two altars of Saint John and Saint Paul, 
which are at the entrance of the choir of St. Mark's, 
altars which date from 1462 and 1471, enables one 
to recognize with certainty the invention and the 
hand of Pietro. This is a date which makes it 
possible to fix approximately the age of the first of 
the Lombardi ; but their history remains doubtful 
although they had Temanza for their historian. We 
know that in 1482, when Bernardo Bembo was the 
Venetian governor of the ancient Lombard city of 
Ravenna, Pietro was commissioned to design the 
chapel and sarcophagus of Dante. The architectural 
part of the work was his as well as the sculpture, 

186 



THE LOMBARD!. 187 

and both bear the unmistakable mark of his inven- 
tion. On the public place of the same town, accord- 
ing to Venetian custom and by desire of the Senate 
which governed the conquered town, Pietro also 
erected two great columns, so as to place on the 
capitals^ in imitation of those on the Venetian Piaz- 
zetta^ the statue of St. Apollinaris the patron saint 
of the city, and the winged lion the symbol of the 
dominion of St. Mark. 

In the same year he began, at the expense of the 
town and under the superintendence of provveditori 
elected for the purpose, the building of that admir- 
able little church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli. He 
had obtained this commission in competition, and 
took seven years to execute it. The style of the 
church, which is entirely characteristic of the man- 
ner of the Lombardi, is an appropriation of Greek 
and Roman forms : but their settled predilection 
for a particular style in the details did not exclude 
originality in the plan, and every one knows that in 
architecture it is the plan which governs everything, 
dictating inevitably to the artist the main lines and 
configuration of his structure, and leaving him only 
free to express his individual bent and fancy in the 
system and details of the ornamentation. In Santa 
Maria dei Miracoli Lombardo expressed with com- 
pleteness the architectural formula of his school; he 
may have done greater work at a later time, and his 
successors may have had occasion to express in an 



188 VENICE. 

ampler fashion tlie same thoughts and feelings ; but 
I repeat, whether in civil or ecclesiastical architec- 
ture, whether in building a palace like the Dario or 
a basilica like the admirable San Zaccaria, they will 
always be known by the unmistakable marks of their 
school : the purity of Greek form allied to Venetian 
imaginativeness, the severity of the Florentine chisel 
joined to the grace and delicacy of the artists of 
the lagoon. 

More than thirty years ago, the little church of 
San Andrea della Certosa, a work of Lombardo 
very highly praised by Temanza, was demolished. 
Another church built by him at Murano, that of 
San Cristoforo, was also destroyed to make a 
burial-ground for the town. All lovers of art re- 
gretted it, for besides its graceful proportions it was 
full of charming detail and ornament worthy of the 
master. 

The monument of Cardinal Zeno, which is at the 
entrance of the Basilica of St. Mark near the bap- 
tistery chapel, is the work of Pietro. It is a superb 
structure, within the most amazing of all structures ; 
as in Venice we frequently find thus placed within 
the Basilica the monuments of the genius of sculptor 
or architect. The city is fidl of such surprises, and 
those who content themselves with admiring the 
general aspect of any church without descending 
to the details will deprive themselves of much 
artistic enjoyment. Antonio Lombardo and Ales- 



THE LOMBAKDI. 189 

sandro Leopardi had been first charged with this 
work; a quarrel arose between them, and Zuane 
Alberghetti and Zuane delle Campane were sub- 
stituted for them. As the work did not advance, 
the aid of Pietro Lombardo was sought, and thus 
he had his own son under his direction. The 
work was not finished till 1515 ; Pietro carved the 
figures on the sarcophagus, the Faith, Hope, and 
Charity, the Prudence, Piety, and Munificence, and 
also the figure of the Cardinal lying on the tomb. 
The altar of this same chapel is one of Pietro's 
finest pieces of minute ornament ; the foliage and 
ornaments of all kinds are of the most finished 
delicacy ; the grace and science of the detail can 
only be compared with the marvellous gates of the 
Cathedral of Como by Eodario. 

The fine sepulchral monument of Pietro Mocenigo, 
at San Giovanni e Paolo, is again certainly the work 
of Pietro. Though this Doge died in 1476, his 
tomb was not built till later. In this case the 
sculptor could give himself free scope, for the archi- 
tectural design of the monument left him a great 
part to fill, and as he united the practice of both 
arts we have here a perfect example of his manner. 
Such a work, however, could not be thoroughly com- 
pleted without the help of very skilful fellow-work- 
men, and Pietro under these circumstances had re- 
course to his two sons Tullio and Antonio. 

In civil architecture^ the Palazzo Vendramin, 



190 VENICE. 

which once belonged to the Duchess of Berri, is 
incontestably attributed to Pietro. A certain analogy 
of style^ that is to say^ a manner of coupling two 
round-headed windows within the span of a single 
arch supported on two pilasters, caused the attribu- 
tion to him also of the Corner-Spinelli Palace on the 
Grand Canal. 

It was at the very close of the fifteenth century, 
in 1499, that Pietro Lombardo, in the full enjoyment 
of his reputation, found himself naturally marked 
out to the choice of the Signory as Director of 
Public AVorks in place of Antonio Rizzo, the de- 
signer of the Giants' Staircase and part designer 
of the beautiful interior facade to which it leads, 
and of the fagade of the same Ducal Palace on the 
little canal which is crossed by the Bridge of Sighs. 

The original decree is dated 15th March 1499, 
and it has been preserved. It is only from the end 
of the fifteenth century that we have thus real and 
precise notices of the authors of particular works 
of art at Venice. '^ Antonio Rizzo, formerly 
appointed overseer of the Palace works at a salary 
of 125 gold ducats a year, being absent from 
Venice, and it having become necessary to proceed 
with the said palace, Pietro Lombardo, a man of 
high distinction in his art, shall be substituted for 
him, and be appointed at the same salary, to begin 
from the 16th of March ; he can thus continue to 
superintend and direct the works as he has been 



THE LOMBARDI. 191 

doing in past months." These last words evidently 
mean that Pietro had been acting superintendent in 
the interim ; and we cannot doubt as much when we 
look at the facade. Appointed regularly to the post 
in 1499, he filled it till 1511 ; the fine architecture 
of the interior of the court, which corresponds to 
the side of the Basilica of St. Mark, dates from 
1501, that is to say in the first year of the reign 
of Leonardo Loredano as Doge ; we may therefore 
conclude, in spite of all the assertions of distin- 
guished Venetian writers to the contrary, that he 
was the inspirer and architect, if not of the plan, — 
for we see he replaced a predecessor Antonio Rizzo, 
— at least of the exterior ornamentation. The 
famous Clock Tower had been attributed to him, the 
arched doorway of which leads to the Merceria ; but 
the Diary of Sanudo assigns to this building the 
date of 1466 ; and Pietro was then not yet in the 
service of the Republic. 

Regarded as a sculptor independently of monu- 
ments, chapels and tombs, Pietro produced very 
little. A few small figures are attributed to him 
which adorn the church of Stefano, but which do 
not show the hand of an artist of any great impor- 
tance. It was necessary for him to conceive the 
design of a whole in which sculpture should be so 
blended with architecture that even its general out- 
line would be sufficient to give pleasure to the most 
exacting eye. On February 7, 1504, the Fondaco 



192 VENICE. 

dei Tedeschi on the Eialto was burnt^ and Pietro 
was charged to rebuild it ; but unfortunately nothing 
remains but a shapeless mass, on that spot where 
such a splendid genius must have erected a building 
of noble beauty, enhanced by the exquisite paint- 
ings with which Giorgione and Titian presently deco- 
rated it. 

After 1511, we look in vain for a trace of Pietro; 
he is replaced in his office of protomaestro of the 
Ducal Palace and Signory, which evidently shows 
that he must have died by this date. He is the 
founder of the dynasty of the Lombardi ; and main- 
tains his place brilliantly among them all ; but he 
was certainly surpassed by his descendants. 

MAKTINO LOMBARDO. 

Among the most perfect buildings of the Renais- 
sance in Venice are justly reckoned the Scuola di 
San Marco and the church of San Zaccaria. Both 
are by Martino Lombardo. 

It is difficult to say whether he was Pietro's son ; 
I think not, for his Avorks and those of Pietro are 
contemporary, and the one name disappears with 
the other ; it is more likely that he was the son of 
one of his brothers. The Scuola di San Marco is 
the incomparable building (now used as a civil 
hospital) which rises on the left of the principal 
facade of San Giovanni e Paolo, on that splendid 
square where the equestrian statue of CoUeoni stands 



THE LOMBARD!. 193 

in its pride and grandeur. The three monuments 
together^ the narrow canal^ and the bridge which 
spans it, form one of the finest combinations in 
Venice. The various structures of the combination 
do not strictly correspond in point of date ; the 
charming and noble pedestal of the statue, the work 
of Leopardi, is certainly in harmony with the Scuola, 
but the architecture of the facade of San Giovanni 
e Paolo is earlier, and is of the transition period 
between Gothic and Renaissance. The fine central 
door of the facade to which the building of Martino 
is joined, is even a strongly -accented pointed arch, 
but the ornament tells of the approaching Renais- 
sance. 

These interesting monuments of this architectural 
period cannot fairly be described, and the traveller 
should visit them for himself. It may be fearlessly 
asserted that in no period did architecture ever as- 
sume more lovely forms, or clothe itself with greater 
wealth of imagination or more grace and invention 
in detail. Here is nothing pedantic, nothing dry, 
nothing gloomy under pretext of grandeur. The 
doorway is reduced to human proportions, it is a 
common entrance through which one can pass with- 
out state ; Martino frames it in a larger door of ex- 
quisite work, rich as the door of Stanga, but simpler 
and of bold design. To right and left, as there is 
no necessity for openings, his fancy suggests the 
strangest and most unexpected ornamentation. 

13 



194 VENICE. 

Without transgressing his architectural lines he 
devises two perspectives, so to speak, one on either 
side, each framed in an arch a little lower than 
that of the principal door. These consist of two 
allusions to St. Mark : two life-sized lions carved in 
bas-relief stand upright and seem to guard the thresh- 
old ; bj dexterous treatment in marble mosaic, the 
artist simulates a distance, with the animak in the 
foreground bringing out its full effect. This sculp- 
tural detail is by Tullio, w^ho is regarded as the most 
skilful workman and as having the cleverest chisel 
of the family. There is nothing formal in this 
facade ; the windows open by chance where light 
was needed; but it is in correspondence wdth the 
plan, and that is all that can reasonably be asked ; 
the taste of those who do not occupy themselves 
about the interior arrangement of a building will 
realize the harmony without caring to inquire into 
its nature. 

Nothing can be richer than the great tympanum 
which crowns the facade, a circular pediment which 
recalls that of San Zaccaria, beneath which is intro- 
duced the figure of the lion, in order to remind 
one again that the Scuola is dedicated to St. Mark. 
The interior of this beautiful building fulfils the 
expectations raised by the noble grace of the en- 
trance. The staircases, chambers, and ceilings are 
executed as perfectly as they are designed ; the 
friezes run lightly and gracefully along the wall ; 



THE LOMBAKDL 195 

the geometrical combinations which were such a 
favorite resource of this school are arranged with 
singular subtlety and variety. Here is not the 
solemnity of Fra Giocondo in the palace of the 
Lords of Verona ; but after that building and the 
Miracolij it is perhaps the choicest and most exqui- 
site in all the Venetian territory. 

San Zaccaria, one of the finest churches in Ven- 
ice, where the illustrious Alessandro Vittoria is 
buriedj is attributed by Temanza to Martino ; Sel- 
vatico shows how the evidence of dates prevents 
him from subscribing to this opinion ; but if we 
visit the church we shall quickly understand that the 
evident difference of style between the interior and 
the facade proves that the facade is the later of the 
two. If the round arch of the Renaissance is 
adopted for the lower order of the interior, the roof 
is at the same time carried on pointed vaultings, a 
principle which tallies with the date of the building, 
1456 ; while the taste of the fa§ade bespeaks 
plainly the hand of the Lombardi and the early 
years of the sixteenth century. 

There is no doubt, it seems to us, that the de- 
signer of the Scuolo di San Marco is also the author 
of this fine fagade of San Zaccaria. Those arched 
pediments rich in reliefs and mouldings, those flat 
surfaces without openings, decorated with beautifidly 
proportioned panels, the sober elegance of the orna- 
ment; the fanciful treatment of the capitals and the 



196 VENICE. 

daintily ingenious geometrical combinations, all point 
to the hand of the Lombardi, and among them, to 
that of Martino. 

TULLIO AND ANTONIO LOMBAEDO. 

In association with Pietro Lombardo worked his 
two sons Tullio and Antonio, and in the monuments 
designed by the father nothing is easier than to dis- 
tinguish the part borne by each of the sons. Tullio 
was a true and great artist, and as such had a special 
individuality and a high position ; it was not so with 
Antonio, who was simply a sculptor ; a general 
sketch being given, or a rough model of a certain 
size, he was entrusted with the execution of the 
statue, bas-relief, frieze, or capital accordingly. 

Tullio was at once an architect and a sculptor ; as 
architect he had no great renown ; he did design 
entire buildings, probably some palaces, but the 
only very important work of this kind known as his 
is the church of San Salvatore. This church had 
been begun by Giorgio Spavento ; Tullio approved 
neither the plan nor the elevations of his predeces- 
sor, and so completely changed the design, with the 
consent of the establishment and patrons of the 
church, that the work may honestly be called his, 
and his alone. But it is at Treviso especially that 
his buildings can be judged ; it was he who finished 
the choir of the Madonna delle Grazie. In the 
cathedral of that town he built the chapel of the 



Interior of the Basilica of St* Mark^s 



THE LOMBARD!. 197 

Sacrament, and three other chapels in San Paolo, 
and on the sarcophagus of the Bishop of Zanetti, 
which Pietro had designed, he sculptured an eagle in 
fall relief which is a masterpiece. 

But it is as a figure sculptor that TuUio is really 
famous, and among all his family, his is the greatest 
name in this branch of art. At Venice, on one of 
the altars in the church of San Martino, there are 
four small figures of angels of his workmanship 
which critics look upon as the purest work of the 
time in Venice, and as most nearly approaching the 
best Florentine sculptures of the fifteenth century. 
At San Giovanni e Paolo, the sepulchral monument 
of Mocenigo is the combined work of Tullio and his 
father Pietro ; the great captain had been long dead, 
but the people were anxious to give him a perma- 
nent resting-place, and Tullio, though very young 
at the time, was entrusted with the task. It is a 
composition in the same style as those noticed in 
the chapter on sepulchral monuments, but is much 
less imposing. Mocenigo stands above the main 
arch ; in the intercolumniation are two symbolical 
figures ; and each of these, considered as an inde- 
pendent statue, is of the most perfect type of Vene- 
tian art. At San Giovanni Crisostomo, Tullio has 
sculptured the twelve apostles on an altar; this also 
may pass as first-rate work. He is somewhere ac- 
cused of having had the habit of studying his 
drapery from wet tissues, whether arranged on the 



198 VENICE. 

lay figure, or whether observed or recollected from 
nature. This idea did not suggest itself to us in 
looking at the productions of the school, but it is 
plausible considering the thinness and clinging cast 
of the draperies ; every one knows, besides, that 
the great figures of the Parthenon, the originals of 
which were removed by Lord Elgin and now adorn 
the rooms of the British Museum, are draped in the 
same manner ; and it is asserted that this system of 
covering the model with wet draperies was held in 
high repute at Athens and by the whole school of 
ancient sculptors in the time of Pericles. 

A number of detached figures may still be found 
attributed to Tullio ; the nude Adam in the Palazzo 
Vendramin is authentically his, but not so the statue 
of Eve. The bas-reliefs of the Scuola di San Marco 
must also be seen, and at the Miracoli, in the exqui- 
site little sanctuary by his father, two charming 
statuettes on the high altar must be credited to 
him. 

As for Antonio Lombardo, his handiwork is 
merged in that of his father and his brother Tullio ; 
his was perhaps the weakest talent of the family; 
he was not however without merit, and this family 
or dynasty of the Lombardi was so great that the least 
among them is still a master. At San Antonio of 
Padua, there is a bas-relief representing a miracle 
in the life of the Saint, which may undoubtedly 
be attributed to Antonio. For the rest, as we have 



THE LOMBARD!. 199 

said, he lent a helping hand in the works of his 
father and brother ; thus, for instance, tradition 
reports that he was an indefatigable assistant to 
Pietro at the monument of Cardinal Zeno in St. 
Mark's, and the same tradition assigns to him a 
large share in the monument of Mocenigo executed 
by Tullio and Pietro at San Giovanni e Paolo. 
TuUio must have died about 1559. 

SANTE AND MORO LOMBARDO. 
Sante was the son of a certain Giulio Lombardo, 
who was no doubt a brother of Pietro ; he was an 
architect and sculptor, but his work is also con- 
founded with that of his illustrious relatives. Sante 
was born in 1504 and died in 1560 ; when we con- 
sider that Tullio died in 1559, at which time most 
of the Lombardi were still living, we shall see what 
confusion might arise in the minds of contempo- 
raries, and all the more to what greater confusion 
posterity is liable. Nevertheless, now that the 
history of art is no longer written except by the 
light of original documents, some little order has 
been put in all these attributions ; for instance, 
Sante Lombardo has been deprived of his claim to 
the Palazzo Vendramin, which has been restored 
to Pietro; but this was not enough, he has also 
had the Scuola di San Eocco taken from him, a 
work which, had it been really his, would assuredly 
have been his greatest title to glory. The first 



200 VENICE. 

stone of the Scuola was laid in 1517^ and Sante 
was only thirteen years old at that date. He came, 
indeed, to be iwotc of the building, that is, director 
or clerk of the works^ as we should say ; and 
this at an age when it seems impossible that such 
function could devolve upon him, for he was only 
twenty. In this position he succeeded a man of 
genius, Bartolomeo Buono, who, it seems, had taken 
upon himself to make some alterations in the 
original plan. With reference to this point, argu- 
ments have been brought forward to prove that 
the original work and its design were his. If^ it 
was said, a director of the works modified the 
plan of a building, and if posterity has found a 
document which proves that he took this great 
liberty, it follows that he had authority so to alter it, 
and was ready to submit to the consequences to which 
he exposed himself; in a word, that he must have 
been architect as well as director of the works. 
Thus it was concluded that Bartolomeo Buono must 
have been the author of the plan of the Scuola, 
that the alterations he made in the course of the 
work did not please the Chapter, that he was 
therefore dismissed, and a stranger was called in 
to carry out the original conception The result 
is a confusion of names and attributions, which 
becomes still further complicated by the co-opera- 
tion of Scarpagnino, who in his turn succeeded 
Sante Lombardo, and who^ as was natural in so 



THE LOMBARD!. 201 

gifted a maiij left his mark on the work and could 
claim as his own entire portions and complete 
fagades of the building. 

If it is easy to be in confusion about the Scuola di 
San Rocco^ there is no uncertainty in attributing 
to Sante the Palazzo Trevisani near Sante Maria 
Formosa. Though this palace may have a grand 
effect^ like most Venetian palaces built before the 
end of the eighteenth century^ one feels no doubt 
in studying the detail that the Lombardo who 
built this was inferior in taste to his rivals. Still 
the work is mentioned as among the finest in Venice, 
and Cicognara and Diedo have had it engraved in 
their Fabbriclie Venete. The Palazzo Gradenigo at 
San Samuele was also attributed to him, but it is no 
longer possible to judge of the merit of this work^ 
for it has disappeared. This Sante^ of whom 
the Italian chronicles and the writers Temanza 
and Selvatico speak as a sculptor also^ has not 
left, it seems, any great works of this kind ; for 
none of them attribute to him statues that can 
be mentioned or that would give an idea of his 
skill. 

The remaining Lombardo, Moro, is also a cousin, 
older than the last and son of their father's brother 
— =of that Martino of whom I have spoken above, 
and who was the greatest genius of the family 
in architecture, the masterly designer of the Scuola 
di San Marco and the fagade of San Zaccaria. 



202 VENICE. 

In this last work Moro was his father's colleague, 
and Sansovino attributes to him the church of San 
Giovanni Crisostomo, which he is supposed to have 
built in co-operation with Sebastian of Lugano. 
In this sort of co-operation Italian architects had 
a habit which is convenient for posterity : they 
divided the work, after having matured the plan 
in commoD, so that^ when we have made ourselves 
sufficiently familiar with the architectural systems 
of individual members of the school, we can recog- 
nize with certainty the part taken by each. The 
lateral chapels of the transept and the campanile 
may be claimed for Moro. 

Another much more important work also belongs 
to him, that of San Michele of Murano, which 
some winters have attributed to Serlio. The abbot 
Pietro Dona, Superior c»f the Camaldolese, had 
put this building in hand in 1466 : another Dona, 
his successor, completed it in 1478. San Michele 
of Murano and San Giovanni Crisostomo have 
many points of resemblance in their arrangement 
and ornament, and in all the detail of the capitals, 
friezes, and bas-reliefs we can feel the spirit 
of the Lombardi. their taste, and the delicacy of 
their chisel. 

The attribution of this latter church was for a 
long time denied to Moro Lombardo, because the 
chronicles of the fifteenth century attribute it to 
an artist named ^^Moretto Scalpellino,"' literally 



THE LOMBARDI. 203 

^Mlttle Moro the chiseller/' out this is one of those 
familiar appellatives common at the Renaissance, 
and under it the Moro of our present study must 
be recognized. In those happy times^ the name 
of an artist passed from mouth to mouth, he was 
beloved and popular^ men pointed him out to one 
another ; every one, from the workmen under his 
orders to the Senators, called him by his familiar 
name, and by that he becomes known to posterity. 



CHAPTER XII. 

ALESSANDEO YITTOEIA AND ALESSANDKO LEOPAKDI. 

Alessandro Vittoria was styled the Michelangelo 
of Venice, and his name became as popular as the 
name of his master Sansovino. Born at Trent in. 
1525, he came to Venice in his youth to study under 
the famous Jacopo, and the studio of the great artist 
became his school. At first destined for architec- 
ture, that art which embraces all the rest, he soon 
conceived a passion for sculpture, and to it devoted 
himself above all. Nevertheless, as in those days 
the artist could not practise any single art without 
having made himself acquainted with its necessary 
connection with the rest, he soon acquired a certain 
facility in architectural design, and has left complete 
structures of his own composition. Although his 
studies were specially directed to the classical style 
and he had before his eyes the most severe and sober 
examples, antique statues, medals, fragments of all 
kinds brought from Greece or found in the soil of 
Italy, — everything in fact that would tend to develop 
in him a respect for the laws which were first laid 
down by the ancients, and which those great accu- 
mulators of genius^ Lionardo^ MichelangelO; Raphael^ 

204: 



ALESSANDRO VITTORIA. 205 

Palladio, Bramante, and Sansovino had appropriated 
and renewed with their own talents, adding to these 
precious funds of knowledge and invention their 
individual inspirations, — nevertheless Alessandro 
Vittoria suddenly revealed himself as an artist of 
a strained, violent, riotous, extravagant temper^ 
alike over-luxuriant in invention and mannered in 
style. With real genius, and an abundance and 
facility without rival, he yet travestied the antique, 
giving it an interpretation of an entirely new kind. 
He worked with incredible rapidity, covering the 
paper in an instant with rich and varied composi- 
tions, giving twenty different ideas and twenty dif- 
ferent models when he was asked for a single one. 
If a nobleman gave him a commission for a monu- 
ment, a tomb, a votive inscription, a statue or a 
mantelpiece, a ceiling or a bust, the pliable clay 
moulded itself in his hands to every caprice of his 
mind, and he produced spirited sketches that seemed 
to cost no effort to that fertile brain and rapid hand. 
He despised neither the learned dispositions of the 
Lombardi and Sammicheli, nor the elegance and 
always correct and dignified design of Sansovino, 
nor yet the sobriety, power and reserve of Palladio, 
only he could not bridle his own imagination and 
facility. His master Sansovino tried to recall him 
by his counsels to wiser principles, but this indomit- 
able spirit was more likely to impose itself upon its 
followers than to bend to the precepts of its masters. 



206 VENICE. 

In 1547 he left Venice to settle at Vicenza, the 
noble city of Palladio, so full of monuments and 
palaces, where an artist of his standing was likely 
to be appreciated at his full worth. Stucco orna- 
ments were then very much in fashion, and all the 
ceilings of palaces were decorated with them. The 
masters who preceded Vittoria had maintained a 
great severity in the use of these mouldings, but 
Vittoria brought to their design such passion, such 
exuberance, such imagination, that in any room he 
decorated, the eye could rest on nothing excepting 
his work. The painter, the sculptor, the architect 
were eclipsed, and harmony, the supreme law of 
art, was violently broken through. It was at 
Vicenza that Vittoria knew Palladio ; and even that 
severe master, — whose aim was grandeur, but who 
never sacrificed anything for the sake of grace, 
reproving all flights of imagination, and keeping 
within the strict limits prescribed by Vitruvius, — 
even he was fascinated by this brilliant genius, this 
large and generous nature, so that they often worked 
in co-operation. The result has caused it to be 
sometimes said that Palladio did not always show a 
perfect feeling for the relations of harmony that 
ought to subsist between the structural and the 
decorative parts of a building. 

A number of works by Alessandro Vittoria are 
found at Vicenza, but he was not yet a padrone^ or 
employer, and no doubt put himself as a decorator 



ALESSANDRO VITTORIA. 207 

under this or that artist of the day who had a public 
contract. After having wandered about for four 
years among the towns of the mainland, putting his 
talents at the service of the architects who were 
employed to beautify them^ he had the good fortune 
to meet with an ardent admirer in the person of 
Aretino. In 1553, Aretino procured him an inter- 
view with SansovinOj who had previously dismissed 
him ; he was received back into favor and settled 
himself definitively at Venice^ where his master 
gave him many commissions in the buildings he was 
then engaged upon. It was at this time that the 
ceiling of the Libreria Vecchia was being recon- 
structed ; in 1545j when the building was hardly 
finished, the ceiling fell in. In a case of this kind 
the Signory did not hesitate, they liked to be con- 
scientiously served, and with no inquiry made 
whether the fault lay with the workmen or the 
builder, Sansovino, their responsible architect, 
though at that time already in full enjoyment of his 
fame, was put in prison and fined a thousand gold 
ducats. It was only at the ardent solicitations of 
Titian and Aretino, who used the influence of all 
their powerful friends in the Senate and College, 
that the great artist was released and restored to his 
post of Director of Public Buildings to the Signory. 
If we compare the plaster decorations of the 
ceiling in the Libreria Vecchia (now the Royal 
Palace) with those in the Ducal Palace, in the 



208 VENICE. 

Albrizzi Palace^ and in the villas of the mainland, 
we are struck by the much greater reserve, severity, 
and harmony with the general design which Vittoria 
shows in the former : he keeps within the limits 
assigned to him by the architect, and adjusts his 
plan to the general spirit of the building ; he com- 
pletes the expected effect and does not spoil it with 
his exuberance. Must we conclude from this that 
the authority of Sansovino, who had been his master, 
kept him by injunction and advice within the har- 
monious key he had struck, or rather (as is more 
than likely in the case of a man of such varied 
genius, at once a great sculptor and a great archi- 
tect) that the Director of Public Buildings to the 
Republic himself designed these decorations and 
that Vittoria only executed them ? These are 
difficult questions to decide ; but what is certain 
is, that whenever Vittoria worked in concert with 
Palladio, he gave the rein to his vehemence and 
constantly compromised the architectural unity of 
the result. In the ceiling of the Hall of the Four 
Doors in the Ducal Palace we have an astonishing 
example to corroborate what we have said. Of 
this ceiling Vittoria has made a world of sculpture, 
in which life-sized figures, white upon a gold 
ground, are contrived in niches, friezes, panels, 
and by way of supporters and caryatides — the 
whole so overwhelming in effect as quite to usurp 
the place in the spectator's attention which ought 



ALESSANDRO VITTORTA. 209 

to be taken by the paintings of Contarini, Titian, 
Carletto Caliari and Vicentino. And this chamber 
of the Four Doors, one of the most interesting in 
the palace, is without any doubt by Andrea Palladio. 
But in spite of exaggeration and mannerism, it must 
be confessed that all Vittoria's human figures in this 
ceiling, considered irrespectively of the architects, 
or even of his own general design, are superb in 
gesture, noble in outline, and irreproachable in 
anatomy. 

The plaster ornaments of the ceiling of the Scala 
d^Oro of the Ducal Palace are by the same hand ; 
this staircase takes its name from the gold ground 
of Vittoria's figures and ornaments. The Senate 
wished to commemorate the royal visit of Henry III. 
to Venice in 1574, and charged Alessandro Vittoria 
with the sculpture of the frame for an inscription 
of a monumental character which was to be let into 
the wall at the top of the Giants' Staircase. The 
artist has employed in this case that panelled border 
in high relief which is a regular characteristic of his 
design, and which we find in all his schemes of deco- 
ration, including the funeral monument which he 
erected to himself in San Zaccaria ; but the two 
figures which form caryatides at each side are so 
noble and dignified that they remind us of Jean 
Goujon. 

We might consider Vittoria in four diff'erent cha- 
racters ; as architect; figure-sculptor, sculptor of 

14 



210 VENICE. 

busts, and sculptor of plaster ornaments. A special 
essaj on such a man would be a subject worthy of 
any author, for Vittoria held an extraordinary place 
in his age at Venice. He became the arbiter of 
art. he alone was left from the great period ; all those 
great men were dead whose names are Avritten on 
the Stones of Venice, and on the walls of her 
palaces — Tintoret, Titian, Veronese, Sansovino and 
Palladio ; the decadence was beginning, and at the 
age of eighty-three, as the sole representative of 
the art of the Renaissance in the City of the Doges, 
Alessandro enjoyed an enormous renown and an 
authority without rival. He created a school ; but 
it would have been better, in spite of his prodigious 
talent, if he had remained alone and not made dis- 
ciples, for they only copied his faults and exagger- 
ated his mannerisms. Whether by virtue of the 
offices he filled or whether by the weight of his own 
authority as an artist, he was the great judge, the 
dispenser of fame, and also of the emoluments to 
be drawn from the practice of art. He was, if the 
chroniclers are to be believed, a man proud and 
greedy of praise, expecting to be constantly spoken 
to about his talents and reputation. He had lived 
in close intimacy with Veronese and Tintoret ; but 
they were estranged later, as Vittoria could not 
brook the greatness of the others' names. The 
young, those who occupied a less exalted position, 
or who were ambitious to do great works, did not 



Giants' Staircase^ Ducal Palace 



ALESSANDRO VITTORIA. 211 

shrink from the part of incense-bearers, and he was 
to be seen walking about Venice in company with 
such painters and sculptors of his time as he pat- 
ronized and designated to the Signory as capable 
of the task of decorating public buildings. Con- 
tarini owed him all his fortune ; thanks to him, un- 
doubtedly, the younger Palma obtained important 
commissions, and Pictro Malombra accused him of 
having by a word; regarded in Venice as an oracle, 
ruined his whole future. One must read contem- 
porary writers and Venetian chronicles in order to 
realize the position of such artists in the sixteenth 
century. A little later missions of high dignity 
were confided to painters and sculptors in Germany, 
Flanders, Spain, and even in France. Rubens was 
made a plenipotentiary, and Velasquez a sort of 
Minister of Fine Arts and Aposentador ; but in the 
days of which we write, from 1500 to 1600, great 
artists corresponded directly with princes, who sought 
them out and cared for them, not for reasons of State, 
but from personal liking and from the love of art. 

In looking at Vittoria's work as a whole, we must 
recognize that his genius was, above all, that of a 
decorator ; no one knew better than he did how to 
devise a telling outline, and with a few vigorous 
strokes to block out a statue made to be seen at an 
immense height : more detail would have destroyed 
the effect, less movement would have neutralized it. 
He had a perfect eye for seeing what part he should 



212 VENICE. 

sacrifice in a figure^ what other he should exagger- 
ate so as to satisfy the eye. The most conclusive 
examples of this are the " Justice '' and the " Ven- 
ice/' which stand as symbols of the Eepublic on the 
extreme point of the cresting of the two great win- 
dows of the facade of the Ducal Palace^ one on the 
Riva, and the other on the Piazzetta. The fire of 
1557 had destroyed this part of the building ; Vit- 
toria set aloft these two marble figures which stand 
out white and radiant against that vaporous sky 
which inspired Veronese^ — noble allegories^ worthy, 
both of them, of the ideas they represent and of the 
majesty of the Republic of St. Mark. 

In plaster ornaments the artist is inimitable when 
a definite space and a stated depth of relief are pre- 
scribed to him ; but if he is given his own way he 
gets into disorder, and displays such violent action 
that the work as a whole is discordant in spite of the 
masterly talent displayed in its several parts. We 
have devoted a protracted study to the Villa Barbaro 
on the mainland near Asolo, which was built by Pal- 
ladio for Marcantonio Barbaro, an ambassador of the 
State at Constantinople, and his brother Daniele, 
Patriarch of Aquileia. All the rooms are admirably 
painted in fresco, and the compositions are framed 
in moulded borders by Vittoria. There the genius 
and authority of Veronese have kept him within 
bounds ; he is grave, dignified, and keeps his place ; 
the three great fellow-artists, Palladio, Veronese, and 



ALESSANDRO VITTOEIA. 213 

Vittoria all work together with one mind to a har- 
monious result. But in the garden, two steps off, 
either the ambassador or the architect had asked 
Vittoria to make a grotto or fancy receptacle for 
sculptures, after the taste of the time, in the side of 
a mound to which you ascend by a gentle slope from 
either side ; and Vittoria, finding himself released 
from the restraint of Palladio, and with perfect 
liberty of action, has heaped the inventions of his 
art one upon another, and with statues, caryatides, 
stone censers, raised borders, genii, cupids, gar- 
lands of fruit and flowers, consoles and masks, has 
made a '^ grotto '^ indeed, such a Nicolo delF Abate 
might have imagined. 

When the entire direction of a building or chapel 
in some large church was given over to him, he did 
not show the highest taste in details, and allowed 
himself to use incongruous formes which strangely 
injured the general design. At San Giovanni e 
Paolo he was entrusted with the chapel of the Rosary, 
erected by the confraternity of that name after and 
in commemoration of the battle of Lepanto. In 
this w^ork his colleague was Girolamo Campagna, 
who made some of the statues in niches; the others 
are by Alessandro. The ^^ Ateneo Veneto'' of San 
Fantino, which used to be the Scuola di San Giro- 
lamo, is altogether his work, both architecture and 
sculpture ; the style of the fagade is not worthy of 
his name ; but as he has adorned it with an ad- 



214 VENICE. 

mirable bas-relief representing Christ on the Cross 
and the Mater Dolorosa, the architect is forgiven for 
the sake of the sculptor. The monastery of the San 
Sepolcro, on the Eiva dei Schiavoni, and the Balbi 
Palace, are also his designs. The first is no naore 
than a ruin. The second was built between 1583 
and 1590 ; some writers refuse to believe that it is 
his work, and add that if the tradition assigning it 
to him is true, it is the poorest of all his architec- 
tural productions. One would expect the interior to 
contain some of those beautiful ceilings with which 
he so often adorned his chambers, but we have often 
visited the palace, which now belongs to M. Guggen- 
heim, and nothing in it recalls the great sculptor. 

I have now mentioned his principal architectural 
works ; besides these, there are a number of chapels 
by him, those of San Giuliano and San Salvatore ; 
in all, the sculptor shows himself superior to the 
architect, who really does not deserve any promi- 
nent place in an epoch so fruitful in talent of this 
kind. But it is in the figure that Vittoria takes his 
revenge, and excels ; in spite of all his faults, he is 
without doubt the first figure sculptor of his time. 
The first half of the sixteenth century is rich in 
great masters, but the tradition of Sansovino grad- 
ually expires, and at the end of the century Ales- 
sandro remains without a rival at Venice, and all 
who shine in their art are his pupils. 

It is impossible to pretend to give a regular cata- 



ALESSANDRO VITTORTA. 215 

logue of the detached figures sculptured by Vittoria. 
They are extremely numerous^ and have been scat- 
tered so that they would have to be sought in other 
places besides Venice. By him are the two great 
caryatides which one elbows every day in passing 
from the Piazzetta on to the Piazza, before the door 
of the Libreria Vecchia. This was not perhaps the 
right place for these colossal statues ; Vittoria's art 
demands a certain distance, and here less than any- 
where is it possible to judge of the effect. The 
work is fine, nevertheless, and in the knowledge of 
anatomy no one can surpass it. 

Probably the most celebrated of all his statues is 
the St. Jerome of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. 
It is said that the head is a portrait of Titian at the 
age of ninety. The tradition may be true, for it 
was quite in the spirit of those masters to commemo- 
rate their contemporaries by thus reproducing their 
features. In another instance at the door of the 
Sacristy of St. Mark's, Sansovino, in a panel of 
bronze which is a perfect masterpiece, has left to 
posterity portraits of the majority of the great 
artists of his day, and Titian and Aretino appear 
among them in the character of the holy apostles. 
What is most admirable in the St. Jerome, after the 
feeling expressed in the countenance, is the extra- 
ordinary technical skill in the exhibition of the 
anatomy and muscles in this aged figure, the mas- 
terly treatment of the arms, hands and feet. Still 



216 VENICE. 

the statue is somewhat wanting in repose, like the 
decorative work of Vittoria. and the design is not 
free from mannerism. The marble is ostentatiously 
signed at the base, " Opus Alessandri Vittoria," and 
it occupies the chief place on the altar dedicated to 
the Saint in the Pantheon of Venice. 

If I had to make a critical choice among the 
works of Vittoria, after the St. Jerome, I should 
give the prize to the small caryatides of the funeral 
monument which the artist erected to himself in San 
Zaccaria, that admirable church built by the Lom- 
bards Though he did not die till 1608, Alessandro 
had begun his own monument as early as 1595. It 
is more than simple, and is composed of a frame fas- 
tened against the wall, supported by caryatides rep- 
resenting architecture and sculpture, and crowned 
by a cornice with volutes : in the middle rises the 
bust of the artist, also sculptured by himself; as in- 
scription underneath are only the w^ords, Alessan- 
dro Vittoria — Viveiis vivos e marmore duxit vul- 
tus : ^^ Living he drew from the marble living 
lineaments." The two little allegorical figures which 
support the cornice are of the most finished grace ; 
they recall^ but with much greater refinement and 
nobility, the two figures in the same style which 
support the inscription commemorative of Henry 
III.'s visit to Venice, at the top of the Giants' 
Staircase ; but these two caryatides, in spite of their 
grace and charm, are to some extent spoiled by 



ALESSANDRO VITTORIA. 217 

the tumultuous taste of the scrolls that surround 
them. 

At San Giorgio Maggiore and at San Francesco 
delle VignCj a number of statues by the master may 
be seen ; these are Evangelists and Saints in niches^ 
which form a part of the architectural whole. In the 
Grimani chapel of the church of San Sebastian^ he 
has a St. Anthony and a St. Mark ; at San Giacomo 
of the Rialto, a St. James which is remarkable in 
his work for dignity and repose of attitude ; at San 
Giuliano, a St. Daniel and St. Catherine^ decorative 
pieces executed too rapidly and almost unworthy of 
him ; and finally at San Salvatore, on the altar called 
that of the Pizzicagnoli^ a St. Sebastian and a St. 
Roch. 

One must place oneself at the right point of view 
to judge these different works. They were at that 
time in Venice in the very midst of the enthusiasm 
for building and embellishing the city ; the nobles 
all wished to perpetuate their memory by some pious 
foundation to which they devoted their large for- 
tunes ; they prepared sumptuous tombs for them- 
selves, and architects and sculptors had no lack of 
employment. Alessandro Vittoria, whose excep- 
tional position at the head of the school we have 
pointed out, was in such immense repute that he was 
naturally chosen by every one who wanted to either 
erect a chapel, or to have a funeral monument worthy 
of the name he bore, or to build himself a pahxcc or 



218 VENICE. 

a villa. All the more^ it was the right and the duty 
of the Signory to employ, in the works it ordered 
for the beautifying of the city, the man who was 
looked upon as the star of Venice. For all these 
different engagements a single sculptor, however 
vigorous and prolific, could not suffice, and a consid- 
erable share must have been given to the workman 
in carrying forward all these more or less routine 
commissions. A sculptor does not always work 
upon the marble itself. If the individual touch of 
the chisel is more preceptible in the statuary of the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries than of later 
days, it is not to be denied that for one Michel- 
angelo, who ^^made the marble tremble,'' there must 
have been a hundred sculptors who looked upon 
their task as accomplished when once the model in 
clay or wax was completed. Alessandro Vittoria, 
overwhelmed with orders, and with all the architects 
of his time hurrying to him with commissions for 
statues and bas-reliefs, must more than any one have 
had recourse to assistants, more or less skilful, to 
carry out his ideas ; and a great number of the 
works placed in exterior niches and on altars are 
pieces of mere trade produce, for which he doubtless 
gave but a rough model and left it to be carried out 
by workmen. We have nevertheless found one 
document which proves to us that the valiant artist 
himself carved in wood, an art in which, all things 
considered; the individual touch is even less neces- 



ALESSANDRO VITTORIA. 219 

sary than in marble ; but we think this particular 
case must have been in his youth. The remark we 
make here explains many incoherencies and lamen- 
table gaps in the general view of this splendid 
achievement. 

As a portrait sculptor Alessandro Vittoria is in- 
imitablcj and he had the great merit of not sacri- 
ficing the likeness and human individuality of his 
busts to the general effect. In this department he 
had no rivals in Venice. He practised it in two 
manners ; the finished marble bust, always grand 
and imposing, always noble and monumental, which 
produced exactly the features of the model^ keeping 
the lines in harmony with the architecture, but car- 
rying very far the modelling and the finish of the 
draperies and accessories ; and the more rapid and 
decorative sketch, in which he considered chiefly 
the type of the subject and the general lines. Gen- 
erally these decorative busts were made for vesti- 
bules, niches, and gardens, and often in terra-cotta. 
The villas of the mainland and the palaces of Ven- 
ice contain some. Others are scattered to all parts 
of the world, and four of these, highly characteristic 
because they each surmount a terminal pedestal 
wrought from the same block as the bust itself, and 
thus bespeak the kind of purpose for which they 
were destined^ are in the Albertina Museum at 
Vienna. 

The greater number of the most important busts 



220 VENICE. 

by Vittoria were made for the sepulchral monuments 
of Venice ; these form an integral part of the urn or 
monument^ the entire design of which was often 
finished by the same sculptor. 

To make an exact catalogue, one would have to 
search through the whole of Venice, going through 
all the palaces ; but I may mention at San Giuseppe 
the tomb of Antonio Grimani, at Santa Maria Zo- 
benico that of Contarini^ in the cloister of San Ste- 
fano the bust of Viviano Viviani^ at Santa Lucia 
that of MocenigOj at St. Sebastian Antonio Grimani^ 
in the Ducal Palace a Sebastian Venier, at the 
Academy Girolamo Contarini, at the Salute Gio- 
vanni Batista Peranda, and lastly, at Santa Maria 
delP Orto, Tomas and Caspar Contarini. This last 
bust is considered one of his finest, and indeed the 
high sentiment which guided the chisel of the sculp- 
tors of antiquity seems to have inspired the artist in 
this work, which is worthy of Greek art. Sammi- 
cheli erected in the Santo at Padua a monument to 
Contarini, admiral of the sea, and also commissioned 
the portrait of this great citizen of Vittoria, who 
seems to have had a special devotion to his family. 

We have already spoken of the funeral monu- 
ment which Alessandro erected to himself at San 
Zaccaria, and we have specially insisted on the 
beauty of the caryatides which decorate it ; the bust 
which the sculptor fashioned of himself may be con- 
sidered as one of his best and most highly-finished 



ALESSANDKO VITTORIA. 221 

works in that kind. This bust is the only evidence 
we possess of his features. Eighty-two folio vol- 
umes containing from seven to eight thousand por- 
traits taken from all the engravings of every epoch^ 
collected in the last century by a monk named Cor- 
ner^ which now form part of the library of the 
Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, were kindly lent 
to us by the Cavaliere Cecchini ; but they did not 
furnish us with the information we were seeking^ 
nor did the Marciana^ nor the Miiseo Correr. We 
may therefore now state almost with certainty that 
the portraits of the Lombardi^ of Bergamesco, of 
Fra Giocondo, of Scarpagnino, and of many other 
famous Venetian artists do not exist. 

In the plastic arts of Venice, the trace of Vittoria's 
influence is manifest ; it was an influence for good. 
Artists of great individuality do not often make pu- 
pils ; the great features of their manner are taken 
and caricatured ; and there is seldom anything 
gained by imitating them. A man who gives him- 
self up to art must bring to it a nature frankly and 
determinedly his own, that spirit of originality which 
will soon declare itself through the lessons of a 
school, whatever that school may be. If by accident 
an artist capable in his turn of becoming a leader 
and a standard, is kept back by studying with a 
master of an absolutely different character from his 
own, he one day breaks his bonds with violence, 
launches with strength and boldness on the road he 



222 VENICE. 

is going to attempt all alone, in spite of the drudgery 
of the work, in spite of the hard struggle he must go 
through. 

Alessandro Vittoria had his first pupil in Alessan- 
dro Andrea, who was so proud of his master's genius 
that he adopted his name, his dress, and would gladly 
have passed for the master himself. He was a na- 
tive of Brescia ; he left a number of works in 
bronze, among others the great candelabrum of the 
high altar in the Salute. This was at the time when 
Andrea Riccio, the maker of that incomparable can- 
delabrum in San Antonio of Padua, had brought this 
style into fashion ; Vittoria himself had produced 
some that were very beautiful ; those of San Stefano 
and St. Mark's are often attributed to him, but the 
common assertions of the guides must be cautiously 
taken ; they are not of his period, except one of 
those in St. Mark's, which is of 1577. The other 
two, which are seen on the altar of the Holy Sacra- 
ment, are signed ; we cannot therefore be mistaken 
in them, and the guides should substitute the name 
of Maffeo Olivieri for that of Alessandro. This 
Olivieri, like Andrea a pupil of Vittoria, came also 
from Brescia. 

Titiano Aspetti is also evidently a follower of 
Vittoria ; and deserves a place subordinate to him. 
His principal work is the celebrated chimney-piece 
which decorates the chamber of the Anti-Collegio in 
the Ducal Palace ; the room is by Scamozzi^ in co- 



ALESSANDRO LEOPARDI. 223 

operation with whom Aspetti worked^ and the details 
of this chimney claim some admiration for their 
qualities of execution. 

ALESSANDRO LEOPARDI. 

Is this artist to be called a sculptor^ architect or 
metal-founder ? He doubtless practised each of these 
three arts, but to what extent was the executor also 
the inventor of those bronzes which posterity ad- 
mires ? 

In chronological order Leopardi should precede 
Vittoria, as he is much the earlier of the two ; but 
his personality^ his style^ and his sphere of action as 
an artist allow of his being considered the chief of 
a school regarding which a few words will be in 
place here, in order to show how much the arts have 
nowadays been specialized in comparison with the 
practice of the age which we are discussing. With- 
out speaking of the threefold gifts in painting, 
sculpture, and architecture which we meet in almost 
all the artists of the Eenaissance, we now find our- 
selves face to face with a man — born in the second 
half of the fifteenth century, and dead before 1545 
— who must be ranked as an artist gifted with the 
purest taste, the most exquisite instinct, the most 
intimate knowledge of the modelling of the human 
figure, and who yet added to these the practical 
knowledge required by a caster of important and 
colossal works in bronze^ calling himself, as the Al- 



224 VENICE. 

berghetti did later : ^^ Metal-founder to the Ee- 
public.'^ 

This habitual toil of the foundry, which demands 
actual muscular exertion, a considerable expenditure 
of bodily strength, a terrible tension and fatigue, of 
which we can form an idea from the vivid and 
brilliant pages of Benvenuto Cellini in his memoirs, 
and by those divine letters in which Michelangelo 
recounts the disappointments he experienced in the 
casting of his masterpieces, — this toil was likely, 
one would suppose, in the long run to give to the 
delicate hand necessary for the tracing of subtle 
lines, that hardening which the hand of the rough 
workman acquires from his daily labor. There is, 
however, no sign of such result, for Leopardi re- 
mains as refined, pure, and severe an artist as the 
most illustrious of the Lombardi. I wish some 
student who should be versed at once in the ran- 
sacking and copying of archives, and in the history 
and criticism of art, would enable us to penetrate 
by the help of original documents into the lives of 
the great artists of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- 
turies. Vasari is an admirable authority, but does not 
by any means give us all we want ; we do not yet 
see clearly enough, we do not realize enough of 
these existences. Why is Alessandro Leopardi 
known as the caster, when he is also the gifted in- 
ventor, of those bronze pedestals which carry the 
standards of the Republic ? The anxiety about 



ALESSANDRO VITTORIA. 225 

material affairs, the management of money, practical 
administration in short, then, occupied these great 
spirits at the very time when they must have been 
already exhausted by the invention and execution of 
incomparable works, the sight of which alone inspires 
posterity with an admiration approaching awe ? 
They were, then, at the same time, inventors, or- 
ganizers, handicraftsmen, and above all (what seems 
to us so incompatible) contractors responsible to the 
State ? What an amount of labor ! and how could 
human strength suffice for it ? When the brain and 
the imagination had created, the hand had to work 
without intermission, and yet more, the artist, keep- 
ing his cash-box and his books, had to pay his own 
workmen, and to meet the provveditore or delegate 
appointed by the Senate to superintend the work. 

We must give up the idea of finding precise de- 
tails about the life of Leopardi ; he also had his 
historian, Temanza, who is more than sparing in his 
information ; it is in his own works that we must 
seek him. The most important are the pedestal of 
the CoUeoni statue, executed in 1495, and the cast- 
ing of the horse of the same statue ; the three 
bronze pilli or pedestals for the masts carrying the 
standards of the Republic on St. Mark^s Place ; and 
three other pedestals which are said to have been 
intended to carry the voting urns of the Grand 
Council. He took an active share in the bronze 
statues of the chapel della Scarpa in St. Mark's^ 

15 



226 VENICE. 

and undertook the sculpture of the Scuola della 
Misericordia ; but his great work, the one which 
shows him at the zenith of his powers, is the tomb 
of the Doge Vendramin at San Giovanni e Paolo. 
We must also credit him with the numerous pieces 
of ordnance which he cast for the Republic, and 
which he studied not less carefully than the masts 
for the Piazza ; but none of these works, which 
would have been so valuable, have come down to 
our time. This is but a small catalogue when we 
consider the place Leopardi held in the arts of 
Venice ; but the quality of his performances is per- 
fectly exquisite ; and even in face of the Lombardi, 
Alessandro of the Horse {del Cavallo) remains abso- 
lutely unique in invention and taste. 

The statue of Colleoni has a legend which is 
worth recounting. The Condottiere is himself an 
illustrious type ; Spino has devoted to him a whole 
volume, ornamented by a magnificent portrait which 
has become very rare, and which may be compared 
with the statue itself. Bartolomeo Coleoni or Col- 
leoni, born at Bergamo in 1400, had entered the 
service of the Republic at the moment when Car- 
magnola, at the head of the Venetian forces, was 
fighting against the famous Piccinino round about 
Padua. Passing by turns from the service of the 
Senate to that of the Duke of Milan, he abandoned 
the latter in 1448 to support the Republic, and he 
was seen expending the same amount of energy and 



Monument of General Bartolomeo CoUeoni 



ALESSANDEO LEOPAEDL 227 

skill against his ally and patron of yesterday, that 
he expended for him when in his service. In 1454, 
while in the prime of life and full of the glory ac- 
quired by his personal valor, his successes, and the 
high authority and influence he exercised on all 
hands, he made a definite contract for life with the 
Republic, and received the title of Commander-in- 
chief of the land forces. He then occupied himself 
in establishing inflexible discipline, organized the 
regiments with great ability, introduced the use of 
field-artillery, and rendered the greatest service to 
the State. 

When we read the history of the time and 
become acquainted with the conditions of war in 
the fifteenth century, we can readily conceive how 
Colleoni, having reached the age of seventy and re- 
tired to his fortified castle of Malpaga, lived there 
the ostentatious life of a prince, enhanced by his 
military glory. Fortunately for posterity, he was, 
as I have said, far from being modest ; he thought, 
like all men endowed with a certain genius, that his 
name should descend to future ages, and in dying he 
bequeathed a considerable sum to Venice, on condi- 
tion that an equestrian statue should be erected to him 
opposite St. Mark's. But a law existed which for- 
bade the Piazza to be encumbered ; the site opposite 
San Giovanni e Paolo therefore Avas chosen, and as 
the celebrated Andrea Verrocchio was just then in 
the full height of his renown at Florence, and in the 



228 VENICE. 

whole of Italy, the Senate charged him with the ac- 
complishment of the Condottiere's desire. 

Yerrocchio betook himself to Venice, and was 
preparing his work when he learnt that the order 
was about to be rescinded, the execution of the 
figure to be given to Velano of Padua, and that of 
the horse only to be left to himself. Ofi*ended by 
this proceeding, the sculptor is said to have broken 
up his model, and to have returned to Florence, 
where a secret messenger of the Senate soon came 
to him, threatening him with vengeance if he did 
not put himself at the discretion of the Signory. 
Verrocchio returned, resumed his work and erected 
the body of the horse ; but at the moment when he 
was going to undertake the casting of it, he died 
suddenly. There are difterent versions of this event, 
that of Temanza and that of Selvatico ; the latter, 
being the most recent and evidently founded upon 
original documents discovered among the archives, 
seems the most likely to be true. Up to the time of 
this account, it was asserted that the artist died of 
chagrin, the consequence of the scarcely- forgiven 
slight, and aggravated by the failure of the cabling ; 
but Verrocchio's will has been found, and also a 
letter addressed by him to the Senate in 1488, in 
which he begs the Signory to allow the horse to be 
finished by Lorenzo di Credi, the Florentine painter. 
This desire was not granted, and Leopardi was sum- 
moned ; he put the last touches to the model and 



ALESSANDKO LEOPARD!. 229 

cast it In bronze. That the horse is Florentine is 
more than evident ; the bridle and trappings, deli- 
cately ornamented with exquisite niello-work, are by 
Alessandro ; the pedestal is also by him, and on the 
girth the artist has inscribed his name ^^ Alexander 
Leopardus V. F.^' 

These two last letters have given rise to contro- 
versy. Do they mean Venetus fecit or Venetus 
fuditf and does Leopardi claim honor from pos- 
terity as the designer or as the caster only of this 
statue ? Some writers want to make a crime of this^ 
and have asked why the name of Verrocchio was 
not added to that of Leopardi ; but one must carry 
oneself back to the time. We know that the fine 
inscriptions on the interior of the bronze vases of 
the Ducal Palace are by two '' metal-founders of the 
Eepublic/' Alberghetti and Nicolo Conti, and that 
these founders were at the same time the inventors, 
the sculptors proper of the work. But this is not 
the only question which presents itself. A more 
serious one arises — if Verrocchio died after having 
made the horse only, and if the Senate decided to 
entrust the figure of CoUeoni to Velano of Padua, 
who nevertheless, it is alleged, did not execute it, 
whose work then is this statue, a masterpiece which 
would insure artistic fame to whatever was its real 
author ? 

No one has answered this question, no one has 
even asked it in a categorical manner. Dis- 



230 VENICE. 

tinguished writers who have treated the subject 
seem to have shrunk from this inquiry^ and as long 
as there is no formal docketed receipt found among 
the archives^ we can only take our stand upon sup- 
positions founded on the style and manner of the 
sculpture. If I expressed an opinion^ I should say 
that the statue is by Verrocchio, that so great an 
artist^ entrusted with the erection of such a monu- 
ment, does not conceive it piecemeal, that harmony 
is the supreme law of art, and that Verrocchio could 
not possibly have executed Colleoni's horse life- 
sized, without having at least sketched in wax the 
rough model of the statue, doubtless on a scale large 
enough to have enabled artists like Leopardi or 
Velano, or others not known by name, easily to 
carry it out. When we call Leopardi '' Alessandro 
del Cavallo/' we allow him, then^ only the casting 
of the horse, and the question remains unprejudiced, 
and ought to tempt some of those studious writers 
who ransack the archives of Venice. 

I said just now that we knew nothing of Leo- 
pardi's life ; let us be frank and admit that we know 
but too much. Great artist though he was, Leopardi 
was a dishonest man ; and this perhaps has given 
credence to the malicious assertion of those who ac- 
cuse him of having seized the glory due to Verroc- 
chio by signing the horse ^^Leopardus V. F.'' I 
have in my heart such a tenderness for Venice and 
for her art; that I should like to tear up the decree 



ALESSANDRO LEOPARDI. 231 

of the Senate signed ^^ 9th August 1487 '' by which 
Leopardi is banished from the Venetian territory as 
a forger; he had tampered with a deed with the 
object of defrauding Marino Bernardo^ contractor 
for maritime transport between Venice and Istria ; 
Cicogna in his Venetian Inscriptions has given the 
counter-decree recalling the artist so that he may 
^^fornir el cavallo.'^ 

Temanza, to whom one must always have recourse 
in speaking of the Lombardi and Leopardi, has said 
that after 1515 we hear no more of Alessandro del 
Cavallo. Since his time documents have been found 
which are mentioned by Cicogna and by the learned 
and amiable Marquis Pietro Selvatico (to whom our 
thanks are here due, for having directed us in the 
researches necessary for certain parts of our work) ; 
in 1521 Alessandro was working at the Zecca ; Pier 
Contarini, in a book printed in 1541, says that the 
great artist was then still alive. Leopardi worked 
in metal for the chapel of San Zeno, an admirable 
building by the Lombardi, too long hidden from the 
admirers of their work ; and it was in his school 
that Alberghetti and Zuane delle Campane were 
trained, and also the famous Vittore Camello, one 
of the first who mastered the art of reproducing 
antique coins, and so well that his works figure as 
originals in many collections. Many of the most re- 
markable medals and the best dies are due to him ; 
he was also a sculptor, and supplied some of the 



232 VENICE. 

statues at the Frari. After him came Giovanni 
Boldu^ Griovanni Maria Fosca, Domenico^ Camillo 
Alberti ; and after that gifted epoch of the first half 
of the sixteenth century — after^ indeed, the sixteenth 
century itself — the art of the founder was still 
prized ; and even to the knockers on the doors of 
Venetian palaces, and to the bronzes which adorn 
them, we find still, if not the pure taste of the best 
time, at least an attention to form an idea which 
commends even these every-day objects to the at- 
tention of amateurs. The beautiful knocker on the 
door of the Palace of the Doge Da Ponte, by Sanso- 
vino, and some others adorning a few of the palaces 
of Venice, are shown in a curious little manuscript 
of the last century entitled Battori BatUcoli Battiloij 
in the Correr Museum. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

PAINTING— ORIGIN AND RISE OF THE VENETIAN 
SCHOOL— TITIAN. 

In the history of art the Venetian school of paint- 
ing fills a great place ; from the Vivarini to Gruardi 
and Tiepoloj these painters had a special stamp of 
their own^ an innate genius^ a savour of the soil^ 
which makes it easy to recognize them at once and 
to class them in the same family. They are neither 
profound thinkers nor nicely-balanced intellects^ nor 
yet ascetics transfigured by their faith ; but they are 
free spirits who create without efi'ort and labor with- 
out fatigue, minds that produce almost as spontane- 
ously as the plant the flower and the flower the fruit; 
so that from their works it is impossible to draw 
philosophical lessons or build up aesthetic systems, 
impossible to give their fertile and original imagina- 
tions credit for deep thoughts or complicated inten- 
tions. As soon as the school shakes off the inevi- 
table influences of Greece and Florence, and pro- 
duces those great artists who were national and in- 
spired directly by Venice herself, it is marked by 
independence, freedom of style, and a contempt for 
traditions and rules which were till then looked upon 

233 



234 VENICE. 

as unalterable. In passing through these Venetian 
mindsj all current ideas, symbolism, — mythology, 
legend, tradition and history, — all the stock-in-trade 
of antiquity, the accepted and recognized modes 
of expression, were at once transfigured. At the 
very dawn of modern art, these painters released 
the human figure from the high conventional expres- 
sion under which it had till then been represented ; 
they insisted upon nature and relief; they invented 
a new scale of color ; they surrounded their crea- 
tions with a warm atmosphere and an amber light ; 
they relieved their figures upon backgrounds of 
landscape at once real and full of sentiment, they 
created a pictorial nature, not indeed unideal, but 
of which every feature may be traced to some part 
of their inland territory or to the islands of their 
lagoon. 

The Venetians were certainly the first decorative 
painters of the world ; it must be admitted that they 
appeal more to the eye than to the mind, and seldom 
touch us more than skin-deep ; they charm the sight 
more than they stir the heart ; and in looking at 
their glowing and sensuous works one does not feel 
overwhelmed, as in the Vatican or the Farnesina, 
with the power of intellect or depth of the concep- 
tion ; the hand, more skilful than the mind is deep, 
runs deftly over the canvas, scattering flowers as it 
moves, laying side by side tones devised to enchant 
the eye^ balancing lines with happy disposition^ 



PAmTING. 235 

melting off soft colors in an ether as pure and trans- 
lucent as that of Venice herself; peopling palaces 
with gorgeous and sparkling allegories. At the 
time of their highest perfection, these Venetian 
artists were pagans, who put their own meanings to 
the things of antiquity ; shaking off the yoke of 
asceticism, and the precedent of those gentle Floren- 
tine spirits who painted religious subjects with a 
temper full of heavenly aspiration, and drew their 
most touching motives from the stirrings of their 
own devout desires. And even in their decadence 
the Venetians were still full of vigor, always opulent, 
vivacious, sparkling, fertile and free from narrow- 
ness, finding material for pictures all around them, 
and even when they only copied nature, giving it 
a fascination and a life which no other school could 
match. Even when they came to be mannered and 
affected, it was still in an original way, still Venetian, 
and not without some dignity. 

The first painters in Venice were the Greek 
mosaic-workers who were brought there to decorate 
the Basilica of St. Mark, in the eleventh century. 
Their designs were in archaic style ; workmen of 
their own race first, and a little later those taught 
by them at Murano, carried out these designs in 
brilliant enamel, whose colors have lasted for cen- 
turies, and still interest us by the unmistakable 
characteristics of their origin. 

In the year 1200^ a Greek named Teofano opened 



236 VENICE. 

a school of sculpture close to the school of mosalsts, 
and there trained up a pupil, Zelasio Ferrarese, who 
became more famous than himself. In the thirteenth 
century (1262) mention is made of a curious work 
which was preserved at Murano, a wooden coffin 
painted by one Martinello da Bassano, and contain- 
ing the remains of the beatified Juliana. After 
Martinello other painters, such as Stefano Pievano 
(1281) Thomas of Modena, Alberegno and Esegrenio, 
substituted mural paintings in fresco or tempera for 
mosaic decoration ; at last, in 1306, Giotto released 
the human form from those rigid conventions which 
had been observed in painting it up to that time ; 
his influence made itself felt as far as Padua ; and 
from him the movement which gave new life to the 
Venetian school took its rise. Nicolo Semitecolo 
(1351) Lorenzo Veneziano (1371) and Nicolo da 
Pietro (1371) followed Giotto ; their works can 
be seen in the rooms devoted to the early masters 
at the Academy of Venice, where one can follow up 
the interesting study of the development of the 
national art. We must not forget the names of 
Altichieri, Jacopo of Verona (1397) and Giovanni 
Miretto, who painted the frescoes in the audience- 
chamber of the Palace of Justice at Padua. The 
dawn of the really national school of Venice 
appeared among the Muranese ; for the progressive 
movement advanced much more at Murano than in 
Venice itself; the artists settled in that island fol- 



PAINTING. 237 

lowed attentively all that was happening round 
about ; Quirico^ in the early years of the fifteenth 
century^ Bernadino, and lastly Andrea^ were the 
forerunners of the Vivarinij whom all the succeeding 
artists of Venice delighted to claim as their ances- 
tors and masters. Johannes called Alemannus 
(1440) and Antonio Vivarini (1445), of whose 
works there are a great number in the Academy 
and in the churches, are the most famous among 
these early names. They occupied themselves 
much with the efforts of Van Eyck, welcomed the 
painters of Germany who came among them, and 
gathered round about Albert Diirer, while Squarci- 
one and Mantegna had already revealed to them an 
art inspired from the great sources of antiquity. 
Squarcione had travelled through the whole of Italy 
and Greece, drawing statues^ bas-reliefs, engraved 
gems, and the ruins and vestiges of the Periclean 
age ; he developed a system of design new to his 
epoch, in which the human figure is treated in com- 
bination with architectural forms, and which causes 
his works to resemble the polychromo-reliefs of 
Greece. Filled with the idea of giving life to his 
figures, he brought back to Venice casts from the an- 
tique, and opened a school where all who were fas- 
cinated by this new art came to study. Mantegna, 
a greater, more learned, and more inspired master, 
brought the art to perfection by his instinct for 
perspective, his noble feeling in the cast of drapery, 



238 VENICE. 

and his profound and scientific knowledge of 
anatomy^ which enabled him to make those bold 
foreshortenings that are characteristic of his manner. 

Tradition has it that Antonio of Messina filched 
from Van Eyck the secret of his method of oil- 
painting. Under pretence of doing him honor, it is 
saidj he penetrated into Van Eyck's studio to watch 
his method of work, then sat to him in order the 
better to get at his secret ; and with his own first 
attempt achieved that execution which has kept its 
brilliancy^ intensity, and solidity to this day. 

The first national Venetian painter was ^^ Magister 
Paulus/' whose signature stands on the famous Palla 
d^Oro (or as he signed at Venice, ^^Paulus de Ven- 
itiis) ; he painted in 1346. After him comes Lor- 
enzo, Nicolo Semitecolo, Antonio Veneziano, Simon 
de Casiche, Nicola da Friuli, Pecino and Pietro de 
Nova (1363). It cannot be said that the early 
masters of this group were free from the influence 
of Giotto ; but in profiting by his example they at 
the same time showed signs of their own Venetian 
character. Murano, however, has the high honor 
of having really founded the school, with Quirino, 
Bernadino, Andrea da Murano and the. first Vivarini 
(Luigi), 1414. After the latter comes Antonio, 
Giovanni Bartolomeo, and finally another Luigi 
Vivarini. They formed a family of artists, who for 
a whole century filled Venice with works already 
bearing characteristics of the age. 



Main Entrance to the Basilica of St» Mark^s 



PAINTING. 239 

Toward 1456 these were succeeded by Jacopo, 
the father of two great brothers Bellini, the two 
Del Fiore, and Carlo Crivelli ; and then we come 
to the introducers of oil-painting into Italy, Anto- 
nello of Messina and the brothers Bellini. Antonello 
does not properly belong to the Venetian school; 
he was a vigorous painter, without any high inspira- 
tion, but possessing character and a firmness of 
drawing worthy of all praise. 

The two Bellini, Giovanni and Gentile, have left 
a portrait of themselves, which is now in the 
Louvre ; they hold a very considerable place, both 
on their own account and as the precursors of others 
who came after them. They may be called the first 
of the emancipated artists, although they had not 
quite shaken off the yoke of the architectural law 
of symmetry ; they took a great deal from the 
Muranese, but went further than these, and opened 
the way to Giorgione and to Titian. Gentile Bellini 
died at the end of the fifteenth century. The Ma- 
donna with six Saints, is to be seen at the Academy 
in Venice, and gives a good idea of the compositions 
of Giovanni, the most famous of the two brothers. 
The principles of the design are obvious — the 
regularity of the arrangement, the traditional back- 
ground of architecture, the sacrifices made to that 
inexorable law of balance ; the elements are a 
central group, a base supporting it, and two groups 
of three figures each which give balance to the 



240 VENICE. 

design. One of the most finished and beautiful 
works by the same handj which hangs over one of 
the side altars of San Zaccaria^ might be almost 
taken for this, so like is the arrangement of the two. 
Giovanni had a contemplative spirit ; he was a pro- 
foundly religious artist, and the simplicity of his 
draperies, his frankness of expression, the infinite 
grace of his virgins, his inward earnestness of senti- 
ment, would make him seem to belong to another 
school rather than to the Venetian ; but he was at 
the same time a colorist, and by this quality belongs 
essentially to his native city. In him there is noth- 
ing tumultuous, impulsive, or turbulent and sensuous, 
no trace of that paganism which characterizes even 
his own pupils. He was reserved, studious, and a 
lover of letters ; the friend of Cardinal Bembo and 
of Ariosto ; he has left a considerable number of 
works ; almost all the great churches in Venice 
possess panels signed with his name. The greater 
part of these represent religious subjects, chiefly 
Madonnas, nearly all resembling one another with 
slight variations. His type is simple and grand ; a 
Virgin which is in the Academy, with the infant 
Jesus standing on her lap naked and quite free from 
all ideal conventions (probably drawn from the child 
of some fisherman or gondolier) recalls, by the 
majestic amplitude of the drapery and the almost 
antique serenity of the expression, the most beautiful 
of the allegorical figures of Greek sculpture. 



PAINTING. 241 

The Sultan Mahomet II., who had seen a portrait 
by Giovanni at the house of the Venetian ambassa- 
dor, and had determined to have a good painter at 
his court, requested of the Republic that Bellini 
should be sent him in that capacity. His brother 
Gentile, however, was sent instead ; he started on 
the 3rd of September, 1479. We have in the small 
Italian room in the Louvre one of the pictures 
painted at the Sultan's court, the '^ Reception of an 
Ambassador,'' which gives a real interest to this 
circumstance of the painter's voyage to the East. 

We must not stop here to dwell upon minor 
groups, but must only study the chiefs of schools, 
and pass by all that has not a specially personal 
note or that does not mark a distinct advance in 
Venetian art. We must not therefore be expected 
to tarry over those men of undoubted talent who 
were but the disciples of the great originators ; 
though their works fill our galleries, and strike the 
multitude who do not know that the style in which 
they work was invented by such and such a man of 
genius, and that to genius only originality and 
initiative belong, while talent is the portion of many. 
We shall try in our rapid survey of the great 
painters to follow the order of time, putting each 
in his proper place in the school. The Vivarini, 
and in the second period Giovanni Bellini, were 
the founders ; Carlo Crivelli is also of their time ; 
after them come Marco Basaiti, Moretto, Carpaccio, 

16 



242 VENICE. 

Cina da ConeglianOj and Eocco Marcone. Cina 
descends from Bellini ; he has his air^ his calm^ his 
depth, but he draws with more certainty and paints 
with a drier brush ; his drapery is superbly cast ; his 
manner is rich and grand, and he goes farther than 
most Venetians in the power of expression. His 
backgrounds, which generally represent his native 
city, are expressed with much detail and color in a 
minutely accurate style which recalls Van Eyck. 

Carpaccio was born toward 1355 ; he was there- 
fore contemporary with the Bellini, but he survived 
them ; his life is absolutely unknown. The great 
Italian biographer Vasari, to whom one must always 
have recourse for evidence about the Italian masters, 
did not even know Carpaccio's right name, and calls 
him Scarpaccia. His works, which are very unmis- 
takable, often well preserved, and signed in a very 
apparent way, allow of our following him from 1490 
to 1522. The galleries of Europe are poor in works 
of this master ; but the Academy of Venice contains 
many of them, and it is there that he must be 
studied. The collection of his works forms the most 
admirable and authentic source of instruction on the 
outward aspects of the fifteenth century at Venice. 
He has painted a series of nine large pictures repre- 
senting the life of St. Ursula ; one of these episodes 
is that of the Ambassadors of the King of England 
coming to ask King Donato, the father of Ursula, 
for the hand of his daughter for the son of their king. 



PAINTING. 243 

This is already an advanced art, and the simplicity 
of the inspiration does not exclude great taste in the 
composition ; but what stirs one most in Carpac- 
cio is his faith, his warmth, the power he has of 
moving and being moved, the truth and depth of his 
expression, the unparalleled sincerity of the painter, 
who must have been an exquisitely tender soul, a 
being full of geniality and goodness. No one 
leaves a deeper impression ; a few Florentines 
only of his epoch, such as Fra Beato Angelico 
in that beautiful convent at Florence which con- 
tains his best works, could equal or surpass Car- 
paccio. His work as a painter did not always 
lie in the field of religion, but to be religious 
was his essential character ; he was pious even 
in the representation of a commonplace or indif- 
ferent theme ; he was natural and unaffected, entire- 
ly taken up with his subject, and by the depth and 
reality of his expression attained to such intensity 
that even after being dazzled by the magicians who 
came after him, the impression made by his work 
remains the strongest on the mind of those who for 
the first time study and compare the various 
elements of the Venetian school. Carpaccio's 
manner of painting is dry ; he has more feeling 
then facility ; he belongs altogether to his own 
time ; he was ignorant of perspective, and the 
temples of his distances intrude upon the foreground. 
In spite of his accurate linear draughtsmanship, 



244 VENICE. 

his work has neither much atmosphere nor much 
distance ; but no Venetian has ever been more the 
incarnation of his own time. We know some of 
Carpaccio's works in private galleries of Venice ; 
the churches also possess a certain number ; one 
among others which is at the Greci is very interest- 
ing as representing a fifteenth-century interior. 
A curious picture representing Venetian courtesans 
on their terrace, of great value in the way of his- 
torical evidence^ may be seen in the Correr Museum. 
The masterpiece of this artist, the ^^Presentation of 
Christ in the Temple/^ is also in the Academy, and 
in the Louvre he is represented by the '^ Preaching 
of St. Stephen at Jerusalem/' a rather feeble work 
which does not give a true idea of so great a 
painter. 

After the Bellini and Carpaccio, comes the man 
who freed the Venetian school more boldly still from 
surrounding influences, showed it the true path, 
confirmed its natural tendencies, and knew how to 
combine them in an impassioned and voluptuous 
form full of freedom and imagination. This man, 
about to break forever with the conventions of the 
Middle Age, was Giorgione (Giorgio Barbarelli), 
born in 1478, and deceased, alas, at the age of 
thirty-two. It is a chivalrous and poetic figure, 
this of the great genius shaking off' the yoke of his 
teachers, driving his work and his pleasures abreast, 
making a Decameron of his life, scouring Venice 



PAINTING. 245 

lute in hand and dagger at girdle, always in search 
of adventures of love or daring, as prompt in fight 
as in serenade, adored by women and feared by men, 
generous and headstrong, jealous, amiable and gay, 
impulsive yet thoughtful ; an ardent and mobile 
nature, spending his life without counting the cost, 
throwing away lavishly the treasure of his days, 
until, cut down in the flower of his age, exhausted by 
night-watches and overcome by love and enjoyment, 
he found immortality in death at the very dawn of 
his genius. He was the first to love movement and 
color, rich carnations and the glow of sunset, purple 
skies and verdant fields ; the first to seek out 
the beauty of warm white bodies bathed in amber 
light, the glow of blood, the play of shadow and 
shimmer of light. 

It is said that Giorgione was the first to decorate 
the outside of his house with frescoes ; this soon 
became the fashion in Venice, and all the people, so 
full of love for art, crowded before the artist's own 
house, the Casa Soranza on St. Paul's Place, to 
admire the glowing allegories of Barbarelli. The 
Senate gave their sanction to this mode of decora- 
tion, by commissioning Titian to decorate the walls of 
the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, which had been destroyed 
by fire in the year 1504 and rebuilt about 1508. 
A harmonious blot of color which only tantalizes 
the eye is all that now remains of these designs ; 
they have been worn away by time and by the 



246 VENICE. 

salt winds of the Adriatic, and damp airs of the 
lagoon. 

It was in painting portraits that Giorgione dis- 
covered his own power; before such grand models 
as Barbarigo and Loredano he conceived a passion 
for life and reality, and no longer seeking inspiration 
from anything but nature, planned his compositions 
without further care for the conventional arrange- 
ments of his first masters. The fine examples of 
his work in the Louvre, the '' Concert champetre/' 
shows all the freedom of his spirit, his delight in 
atmospheric relief, in light and color, the brightness 
of his fancy, and the poetry he knew how to breathe 
into his work. Up to this time there had been 
something dry, precise, and aff'ected in the render- 
ing of landscape ; Giorgione appeared, and in an 
Arcadia idealized by his poetic spirit, and trans- 
figured by the magic of his brush, we find shepherds 
seated on hill-slopes carpeted with moss, while wo- 
men, naked like goddesses or nymphs and beautiful 
as antique statues, though full of life, like the suberb 
courtesans who served the painter for models, 
draw water from myrtle-shaded fountains. 

AVe know not where we are ; whether in the 
Elysian fields, in the country of Ariosto, or the 
champaigns of Belluno, Bassano, or Cadore. The 
scenery and vegetation is Venetian, but the poet 
who creates, the magician Avho holds his harmonious 
palette in his hand, transports us to happy regions 



PAINTING. 247 

which are neither in heaven nor earthy but the home 
of the ideal, that lovely land of dreams which be- 
longs only to the poet, the painter, the musician, to 
the inspired artist in whom heaven has kindled the 
sacred spark, and who has been given to man to 
soothe his sorrows and cast enchantment about his 
brief journey through the world. 

We can judge of the master's genius from the 
large collection of his works in France : St. Sebas- 
tian, St. Joseph, — St. Catherine with the blessed 
Virgin holding her Son,— the Ages of Man, — the 
daughter of Herodias holding the head of St. John, 
— the open-air Concert, — two Players on musical 
instruments, — a figure of Comedy. Venice herself, 
with the exception of certain precious works exe- 
cuted for religious houses, where they still exist, 
possesses but few pictures of the great master whose 
genius is so characteristic of the school : the Acade- 
my of Arts at Venice, generally so rich, counts but 
few works by Giorgione : namely, ^^ St. Mark ap- 
peasing a Storm,'' the portrait of a Venetian noble, 
another portrait of a sitter unknown, and the famous 
picture ^' la Flori," the woman with a guitar. 

Sebastian del Piombo and Titian were the pupils 
of Giorgione. Titian — Tiziano Vecellio — was born 
in 1477 and died in 1576 ; his is that career a 
century long, so brilliant, so fruitful, so full of 
honors and triumphs, that one speaks of his name 
as though it were that of some mighty prince. The 



248 VENICE. 

glory of Titian is derived from that of Giorgione, 
and it is the honor of the teacher to have had such 
a pupil and to have directed the first steps of his 
career. 

Titian had, however, also received lessons from 
Giovanni Bellini ; but Giorgione had more attrac- 
tions for him. At eighteen the pupil was already so 
much the rival of his master as to displease him. 
From the first his portraits were inimitable ; and 
passing from Padua to Ferrara, from Ferrara to 
UrbinOj from Urbino to Eome, from Rome to Paris 
and Madrid, he became the painter of kings, popes 
and emperors, and the friend of Ariosto, whom by 
a stroke of favor which is at the same time a stroke 
of genius, he painted on a background of bays 
symbolic of the honors due to the poet's brow. 
Where could the story of a more splendid life be 
found to write ? Eighty years of glory and of easy 
labor always crowned with success ! His field is 
immense, he touched on all subjects ; he is the his- 
torical painter, though he did not make historical 
subjects his speciality ; but from the '^ Council of 
Trent,'' at the Louvre, to '' Philip IL presenting his 
Son before the Altar," at the Escurial, all contem- 
porary events painted by him bear a stamp which 
makes them the most invaluable record of the age. 
His gallery of portraits of sovereigns, great men, 
and celebrated women is so large that an exact cata- 
logue has never yet been made of this part of his 



PAINTING. 249 

work. He painted Soliman II., Pope Paul III., 
Charles V., Philip II. of Spain, Francis I., the 
Emperor Otho, Clement VII., the Queens and Prin- 
cesses of Spain, the Duke of Mantua, the Count 
Castiglione, the Marchioness of Pescara, the Marquis 
del Vasto, Aretino, the Cardinal de' Medici, the 
Cardinal Farnese, Duke Ottavio, Catherine Cornaro, 
Laura Eustochio who became the Duchess of Fer- 
rara, and a number of Venetian nobles. Most of 
the churches of the city and territory have on one 
of their altars a Virgin by the master's hand ; 
after the great historical scenes in the Hall of the 
Grand Council and State apartments of the Ducal 
Palace, he painted marvellous votive pictures, re- 
ligious scenes which he made to live and glow by 
attributing to the sacred characters in them the in- 
firmities and passions of humanity. Of unequalled 
audacity and mastery, he shrank from nothing and 
his genius knew no law ; look at his ^' Presentation 
in the Temple '' in the Academy at Venice, where 
he gives, in the vast architectural background of 
the picture, a whole angle of Italian sky, with high 
purple mountains, and the rich plains of the Cadore, 
and transports bodily in his work, by the side of the 
Virgin and the high-priest, some ragged egg-mer- 
chant, whom he seats without hesitation in the front 
of his picture, where he stands out, painted with an 
astonishing force of relief, in all the crudity of his 
natural aspect. When he touches the field of land- 



250 VENICE. 

scape-painting Titian does so with an extraordinary 
mastery. In his picture of the '' Martyrdom of St. 
Peter," what an admirable combination of the human 
form with the august outlines of the grand old trees ! 
The original is but a memory now, as it was burned 
at San Giovanni e Paolo. 

In allegory, mythology, and the representation of 
the visions born of his brain, Titian is magical. 
The ^^ Bacchus and Ariadne" of the National 
Gallery is as brilliant as a passage in Tasso, fit to 
compare with the painting of the gardens of Armida ; 
Titian is even a greater poet than Giorgione^ and 
the world he creates, inspired by the real and pal- 
pable world which surrounds him and in the midst of 
which he was born, is arrayed in the brilliant hues 
of an ideal Elysium. Flowers spring under the 
steps of his nymphs, who rattle the castanet and 
stamp their feet as they move ; his chained lions 
and tigers, his wanton satyrs^ his bacchantes croAvned 
with vine leaves, his Cupids emptying their quivers, 
his Danaes and his courtesans, all belong to the 
pagan world, and are radiant with the beauty of the 
classic past ; it is an enchanter's palette guided by 
a poet's brain. 

The great master soon shook off the influence of 
Bellini ; and yet some of his early pictures show 
signs of the elder master. The Virgins in the 
Belvedere Museum at Vienna, with their atmosphere 
transparent as that of Venice, surrounded by their 



Great Council Room^ Ducal Palace 



PAINTING. 251 

golden mists, remind us of Bellini, but a Bellini with 
a greater freedom of outline, more sensuous color 
and more poetry. His facility was very great, and 
his love of work along with a life of unusual length 
enabled him to leave an enormous number of pic- 
tures. But however great their number, a work by 
Titian is almost always the glory of any gallery. 
It is out of the question to go into details of this 
vast achievement, in a general glance at his school; 
but its wonderful variety, and the confidence with 
which Titian attacked subjects the most diverse, are 
points that must be illustrated. ^^ The Assumption^' 
in the Academy, which used to be at the Frari, 
shows him in a majestic phase ; there is something 
of Michelangelo in the positions of these colossal 
figures. Without being inspired by religious faith, 
and without belonging to that race of profound and 
simple souls whom we now call the Early Masters, 
who painted sacred subjects with hearts overflowing 
with faith and countenances transfigured by grace, 
it is certain that Titian found for his virgins the 
sweetest expression of which the human face is 
capable. They are noble, proud and dignified, and 
filled with goodness and the most touching grace ; 
his saints and martyrs are not quite free from the 
bonds of the flesh, but while still remaining of the 
earth, they represent the greatest goodness and 
beauty that humanity can attain to — supreme beauty 
in perfect goodness. Nothing is more striking than 



252 VENICE. 

the magnificent altar-piece of the Virgin in the 
Frari, where Titian has represented Sts. Peter and 
Paul in adoration, surrounded by the members of 
the Pesaro family. In the votive pictures of the 
early religious schools, the donors of the pictures 
remain on earth while the Virgin and Saints are 
enthroned in their glory ; with Titian, the Virgin 
and Divine Infant become human and live in famili- 
arity with man ; the immeasurable distance which 
separates them is realized only by the difference in 
grace, dignity, and charm of aspect. Yet this mas- 
ter, who is so splendid and triumphant in pagan and 
mythological subjects^ so bold and unhesitating when 
he paints some famous warrior in his armor, resting 
his hand in sign of possession on some ivory breast, 
can also be a religious painter. So great is his 
power of putting himself at the required point of 
view, and calling divine inspiration to his aid, that 
he succeeds in transporting us in imagination to the 
world of his evoking; we can judge of this power 
by the ^^ Entombment '^ at the Louvre. It is a mov- 
ing drama : by depth and passion of pure human 
expression Titian has here reached a religious height 
of emotion. Against a strange and tortured back- 
ground, a sky torn by lightnings, the strong figures 
of those who carry the divine body of Jesus stand 
bathed in harmonious half-shadow. The Virgin, 
her eyes still fixed on the corpse of her Son, torn, 
overwhelmed^ crushed with sorrow, wrings her 



PAINTING. 253 

hands while by a movement full of noble signifi- 
cance the holy women try to lead her away from the 
scene of woe. 

There are in Titian^ as in Giorgione^ fascinations 
which cannot be described nor interpreted by the 
pen ; how shall one say that a tone which mingles 
with another tone, that a harmony of color, that a 
particular hue corresponds to a mood of the spirit ? 
And yet this is the whole inexplicable charm of the 
great colorists. To those who know the ^^ Entomb- 
ment ^' of the Salon Carre we would recall the red 
of the trailing cloud-openings in the sky and the 
marvellous drapery of the young man seen from 
behind who carries the dead Christ in his arms. 

Pordenone, who was himself a great artist, de- 
clared, and well he might, that the naked women 
of Titian were not painted but alive ; nevertheless 
the master's delight in those ivory surfaces, that 
firm and lovely flesh which seems penetrated with 
light, and beneath which you are aware of the very 
blood and breath, — never made him forget the grand 
style ; there is something of the Fornarina in the 
^^ Woman with the Mirror'' of the Louvre; these 
are the stanzas of the poem of beauty, sung by an 
artist enamored of form, seen by a painter who has 
an ideal within him, however sensuous that ideal 
may be justly called in comparison with the spiritual 
painters of the Florentine school, less in love than 
he was with life and color. 



254 VENICE. 

Titian's life was the life of a prince. He had 
every honor paid him ; he was a knight^ and 
Charles V. made him a Count Palatine ; he wore 
the collar of St. James, and accompanied the 
Emperor in his triumphal marches as one of his 
great officers ; he had a pension from the Chamber 
of Naples, and lived in luxury, showing hospitality 
to cardinals, princes, and poets. He preserved till 
he was ninety-nine his rare vigor of spirit and 
freshness of imagination ; his brushes had to be 
hidden to keep him from painting, and his failing 
hand tried to work on the canvas to the last day of 
his life. As if nature had to make an effort for the 
destruction of such a vast vitality, the extinction 
of so perfect an organization, he was seized by the 
plague in the year 1576, and his body was carried 
to Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, where some of 
his noblest works are hung. 

Titian had a brother, Francesco Vecellio, who had 
been a soldier before he was a painter ; and a son 
Orazio, an excellent portrait painter, on whom 
Alfred de Musset wrote his legend, le Fils du Titien. 
His pupils were Tintoret, Giovanni del Calcar, Paris 
Bordone, his nephew Marco Vecellio, Palma Vecchio, 
Sebastian del Piombo, and others less famous. 

Titian made a certain number of drawings for the 
wood-engraver, though impressions of them have 
become very rare. Engravings after drawings of 
Titian were made by such artists as Campagnola, 



PAINTING. 255 

Boldrini, Andrea Andreani and delle Grecche. The 
two most famous, which he must have drawn on 
enormous separate blocks of wood, — blocks that 
must be joined to get the effect of the whole, — were 
the '^Passage of the Red Sea" and ^^ The Triumph 
of Christ," which have been reproduced by Valentin 
Lefebvre. Of ^^ Saint Jerome in the Desert," the 
engraving has been attributed to Campagnola, as 
there is a proof known bearing his name. Another 
composition in two divisions, is entitled the ^^Doge 
Francesco Donate adoring the Patron Saints of 
Venice. " The Didot catalogue assigns this composi- 
tion to Marco Vecellio, but we maintain our attribu- 
tion of it to Titian himself. The engraving is sup- 
posed to be by Nicolo Boldrini. Another composi- 
tion, also drawn on wood by Titian, which has all 
the breadth of a fresco, represents '' Milo of 
Crotona ;" and finally the last is called ^' Saint 
Sebastian, San Bernardino, and Saint Hermagoras — 
Patron Saints of the Friuli and of Padua." The 
Abbe Giuseppe Cadorin, about 1843 had begun a 
publication in facsimile size of the originals of these 
woodcuts, under the title : Le Stampe in legno Fatte 
da Ti^iano ed Illustrate dalV Abhate Giuseppe Ca- 
dorin (Venezia, typi di Alvisopoli, 1843). This in- 
teresting publication, which would have popularized 
these rare works, was unfortunately broken off after 
the issue of two or three parts. 

Jean de Calcar^ who was still unknown a i^^w 



256 VENICE. 

years ago, and whose works were attributed to 
Titian or Tintoret, was a Fleming who came to 
study at Venice. M. Charles Blanc has tried to 
prove that the '^ Portrait d'un Inconnu/' signed by 
this master, which is in the Louvre, and which for 
a long time passed as a Tintoret, might well be the 
portrait of the celebrated Andreas Vesalius. Calcar 
excelled in copying the great masters, and it is 
because of this want of originality that he takes an 
inferior place in the school ; he died at Naples in 
1546, and Vasari classes . him among the Venetian 
painters. His portrait in question is a masterpiece, 
and it may now be affirmed with certainty that it 
does really represent the great surgeon, for the same 
portrait figures at the head of a treatise on surgery 
by Vesalius printed in Venice at the same period : 
it is not surprising that it was for a long time 
classed as a Tintoret. Religious pictures by this 
master are to be found in the Cathedral at Calcar, 
and in the galleries of Munich^ Vienna, and Berlin. 



CHAPTEE XIV. 

PAINTING ( (7on<mi^m)—TINTOKETTO— VERONESE— THE 
AETISTS OF THE DECADENCE. 

During the middle of the sixteenth century, 
painting in Venice reached its zenith, Titian was 
still alive, Girolamo Savoldo, Pordenone, Paris Bor- 
done, Lorenzo Lotto, Tintoret and Paul Veronese, 
Sebastian del Piombo, Bassano, Schiavone, Giuseppe 
Porta, are all of the same epoch and illustrate with 
Titian the Venetian school. It is the great time of 
the decoration of churches, the building of monu- 
ments, cathedrals, palaces, and houses ; the nobles 
scatter gold lavishly and hold themselves honored in 
the patronage of great artists ; every great house 
has a painter whom it protects, every altar has its 
pictured saint; the Senate commissions immense 
wall-paintings without stint. Two men above all, 
Paul Veronese and Tintoret, display an incredible 
fertility in this kind, an incomparable facility of 
execution and an unparalleled fire of invention. 
Giorgione is more profound, Titian more penetrat- 
ing, but no one was so prolific as these two. Before 
characterizing them and defining the place of each 
in the school, let us stop for a moment before the 
17 2^7 



258 VENICE. 

Santa Giustina of Pordenone and the Santa Barbara 
of the elder Pahiia^ one of the most celebrated pic- 
tures in Venice. 

Pordenone is the name of a village in the province 
of Friuli where^ in 1484^ Giovanni Antonio Eegillo 
Licinio was born ; he is the painter of a large, lofty 
style, the friend of Giorgione, and looked upon by 
Titian himself as a rival. It was as a painter of 
frescoes on the exteriors of churches and palaces 
that Licinio acquired his name. Nothing is more 
curious than to follow in the records of the Renais- 
sance period the brawling ways of these rough 
campanions, painters, architects, sculptors, gold- 
smiths, jealous of one another, always on . their 
guard, their lives full of chances of rivalry and of- 
fence. They threaten and pursue each other, ready 
to draw on the first opportunity ; it is said that Por- 
denone painted with his sword at his side, and that, 
having a great work to do in the cloisters of St. 
Stephen at Venice, he had a whole armory at hand, 
and for defence in case of attack by a rival, reckoned 
on a round shield for parrying thrusts. His most 
powerful enemy was Titian, whom the Sisters of the 
Monastery of Murano had preferred to decorate an 
altar. Forced to leave the city, where his life was 
in danger, Pordenone lived at Mantua, Vicenza, 
Cremona, Treviso, Udine, Milano, Parma, and Pia- 
cenza, where he made a great name by the facility 
with which he executed great compositions^ straight 



PAINTING. 259 

from the brushy without either drawing cartoons or 
making any preparatory studies. Charles V. sum- 
moned him to Prague^ in spite of the desire of the 
Venetians to keep him with them, as he had just dis- 
tinguished himself by the decoration of the Hall of 
the Senate. He also painted at Genoa for the house 
of Daria^ and at Vienna ; Urcole H.^ Duke of Fer- 
rara^ ordered a series of tapestries from him which 
have become famous under the name of the ^^ Labors 
of Hercules.'' The ^' Santa Giustina'' in the Belve- 
dere at Vienna-j shows the full greatness of his man- 
ner ; the cast of drapery is broad and imposing ' 
though his color had not all the charm of Titian^ 
his style^ it may be fairly said, is sometimes as grand 
as that of his great rival. 

The elder Palma was a pupil of Titian's ; in spite 
of his surname he died youngs for he was born in 
1540 and we hear of him no more after 1588 ; it 
was to distinquish him from his nephew Jacopo^ sur- 
named Palma Giovane^ that he was given his name 
of Palma Vecchio. He painted in the churches of 
the Madonna del Orto^ San Mose, Santa Maria For- 
mosa, in the convent of San Stefano^ at St. Sebas- 
tiauj San Antonio del Castello, at Santa Helena of 
Monte Oliveto^ at the church of the Teatino at 
Vicenza, at Lucca in the church of San Pietro Sa- 
maldij and at Serinalta^ the village where he Avas 
born. His works are chiefly easel pictures. Of all 
his paintings the '^ Santa Barbara" of Santa Jlaria 



260 VENICE. 

Formosa is certainly the most striking and perfect : 
it is in the church of that name, over the altar of the 
patron saint of the gunners in the arsenal, where she 
occupies the centre, while in the small flanking com- 
partments of the picture are St. Sebastian, St. 
Antony the Abbot, the Virgin and dead Christ, St. 
John the Baptist, and St. Dominic. It is impossible 
for sight or spirit to be indifferent to the spell of that 
exquisite countenance of St. Barbara; we have 
never been able to pass by Santa Maria Formosa 
without stopping for a moment to pay our devotions 
to the lovely patroness of the gunnery of the Most 
Serene Eepublic. The drawing of the drapery is 
superb, the flesh and hands admirable for life and 
softness ; it is the beauty of goodness, the noble 
serenity of a saint who is still a woman. 

Paolo Caliari Veronese was born in 1528 and died 
in 1588 ; forty years of unremitting labor seem too 
little for the production of the enormous mass of work 
which he has left. His is not the greatest genius of 
the school, but it is the richest temperament, the 
happiest character, the most inexhaustible gift of 
creation ; he was the most spontaneous spirit, the 
most original and most independent among all Ve- 
netian artists. He conceals considerable knowledge 
under a facility of execution which has never been 
equalled, and every picture of his is a feast to look 
upon. A Venetian to the heart's core, he reflects in 
his work the transparency and light of his own 



PAINTING. 261 

beautiful skies, and the shimmering hues of his la- 
goons ; he is amiable and joyous, full of health and 
generosity and vigor. Both in his conceptions and 
manner of execution there is something triumphant, 
an air of ease and freedom of expression which by 
no means excludes grandeur of style. There is a 
kind of flourish of trumpets in his work, bravura 
airs and songs of victory, a blaze of open sunshine 
and great spaces of azure skies. 

When he paints historical subjects, Veronese is 
blamed by pedants for the straightforward way in 
which he dresses heroes and kings in the brilliant 
costumes of his own prosperous age, clothes god- 
desses in robes of brocade, and decks them with 
pearls and rubies ; even religion wears a smiling air 
in his work. He does not appeal to the intellect, 
but charms and pleases the eye, unrolling before it 
all the splendors of life ; his motive is not profoundly 
serious or sesthetic, he does not reason or analyze ; 
his prowess is among the painter's elements of light 
and color. No one knows better how to surround a 
figure with atmosphere, how to cast a drapery or 
make the light play on its tissue. 

His imagination, full of pomp and grandeur, is 
excited by a vast surface, and no dimensions seem 
great enough for him ; his rapid brush is alive, alert, 
enchanted, his hand works as fast as his mind con- 
ceives ; all springs from his own brain ; he does not 
trouble himself with anv law or rule or tradition ; 



262 VENICE. 

he tramples historical truth under foot, ignores con- 
secrated typesj and as long as he has attained pic- 
torial movement and light he has gained his point, 
for he is the greatest of all decorative painters, and 
has but one object in view, to dazzle the eye and 
arrange his grand compositions with a happy effect. 
I have already, in a work in which Veronese fills 
a considerable place, tried to reconstruct his personal 
lineaments from new and incontestable evidence ; I 
have in fact searched for the history of Paolo in the 
Archives of Venice. Resting on the assertion of 
men who have thoroughly investigated the papers 
of the ^^provveditori al sale,'' where one might hope 
to have discovered the secret of that existence, I 
now do not hesitate to say that Veronese has written 
nothing, left nothing that can bear real and living 
witness to his personality. The most important and 
the most unexpected document that has come to 
light, and that to which one must always return, is 
the account of his trial before the tribunal of the In- 
quisition, when the judges accused him of having an 
impious motive in the execution of the Lord's Sup- 
per painted for a convent. This account was dis- 
covered by M. Armand Baschet, the historian of 
Venetian diplomacy ; it is extremely interesting in- 
asmuch as it contains some lines which confirm what 
all students of art had supposed — that Veronese 
sought above all things for the natural in a picture, 
painting without hidden purposes or profound mo- 



PAINTING. 263 

tives ; adding one figure after another, and caring 
much more about the lines, the harmony, the bal- 
ance of the composition than about the philosophical 
idea of his picture. He wished to please, to dazzle, 
to charm, and never did painter better attain his 
object. 

I think Veronese must have been a robust and 
lusty workman, simple-minded enough, healthy and 
not over-fastidious in spite of his cultivated taste. 
That he was a man of honor we have proof, in his 
answer to Jacopo Contarini, who was appointed with 
two colleagues to designate the artists to take part 
in the decoration of the Hall of the Great Council. 
Contarini met him in the street as he was leaving 
the sitting at which the names of the painters had 
been discussed ; most of them had been soliciting 
and intriguing; Paolo had more pride, and had re- 
mained quietly at w^ork upon his canvases. The 
ambassador reproached him with his little zeal to 
serve the Republic, and his culpable indifference to 
the decision of the judges. ^^ My business,'^ he an- 
swered, ^^is to desire honors, not to seek for them; 
and I understand better how to execute a commis- 
sion than how to ask for it.'' The manliness and 
dignity of this answer cannot but be admired. 

He pushed this disinterestedness very far, and 
w^ould often scarcely accept payment for his time in 
painting religious works for convents ; it appears 
that he only stipulated for the price of his colors and 



264 YEXICE. 

canvas in order not to be out of pocket. But he was 
a hot-lieacledj passionate man ; he had a quarrel with 
Zelotti^ and had to shut himself up for a time in the 
convent of St. Sebastian to escape the penalties he 
had incurred in raising a dispute which ended in 
bloodshed. It is to this fact that we owe the nu- 
merous and splendid paintings which decorated that 
convent and are now in the Academy. He had a 
wonderful memory and a rare knowledge of anat- 
omy ; he looked at the living model till his mind 
was filled with the facts of nature, and then painted 
direct from memary. Pomp and majesty have never 
been carried further; the enormous decoration 
known as ^^ The Triumph of Venice '^ is a marvel 
of composition — above all if we consider that all the 
figures are on the ceiling, and that the superb ar- 
chitecture is all schemed in perspective toward a 
vanishing point ingeniously chosen. He has col- 
lected here a crowd of figures, who elbow each 
other with the strangest freedom : Venice is en- 
throned in the clouds, and in the foreground are 
flung out together the figures of Glory crowning and 
of Fame acclaiming and celebrating her : of Honor, 
Peace, Juno, Ceres, and the Lion of St. Mark, 
nobles, cardinals, vanquished Turks, warriors, and 
pages holding hounds in the leash. 

Veronese, besides his immense gifts as a painter, 
had a good heart in spite of his hot temper ; every- 
body liked him, and even his rivals were disarmed 



PAINTING. 265 

before him. Titian, who had a jealous nature, took 
pleasure in following his career, and was often seen 
to stop and embrace Paolo in the streets of Venice. 
A man of this kind could not but love choice gems 
and fabrics, all that is rich and brilliant ; he was 
always to be seen in splendid apparel, and indeed 
was somewhat eccentric in his dress, covering him- 
self with brocades and showy materials and fit to 
take his place in one of his own pictures. He does 
sometimes actually figure in them, and it is well 
known that he loved to put in his compositions fan- 
ciful personages that are quite irrelevant to the sub- 
ject ; this was what the Inquisitors complained of, 
and they could not forgive him for having introduced 
German landsknechts and musicians into Scripture 
scenes. On this subject he was altogether free from 
prejudice, and in the most dramatic scenes would 
with rare unconventionality introduce imaginary per- 
sons quite unconnected with the story. There was 
something simple-minded in him, joined to the most 
exquisite refinement, and one sometimes doubts 
whether he did not amuse himself by trying to as- 
tonish the public with such frank representations. 
In one of his most impassioned works he has one 
man with his nose bleeding and another playing with 
a monkey ; but after all there is nothing to shock us 
in this dissonance ; it is a window opened on real 
life, whereby the picture becomes witness to the 
manners and customs of the time. 



266 VENICE. 

In a vast composition — ^^ The Marriage at Cana'' 
— which is the glory of the Louvre, Veronese, by a 
freak of imagination which renders the picture 
doubly precious to us^ has assembled at the table the 
most various and remarkable personages of his time. 
There are the Sultan Soliman, the Emperor Charles 
V. with the golden fleece round his neck, the 
Marchese del Guasto, and the beautiful Marchesa di 
Pescara. On the second place to the right is the 
painter's own brother, standing with one hand on his 
hip and holding a cup in the other, by the side of 
Tintoret, who plays the double-bass and forms a pen- 
dant to the painter himself, who is figured as playing 
the viola ; it is from this portrait that the features of 
Veronese have usually been copied. This work was 
a famous one even at Venice ; and it is a subject 
which often tempted his brush. He had represented 
four ^' banquets,'^ as the chroniclers of the time call 
them : '' The Marriage at Cana,'' painted for the 
Convent of San Giorgio Maggiore ; '^ The Feast in 
the House of Simon the Leper,'' for the Church of 
St. Sebastian ; the third '^ The Feast with Levi the 
Publican " for San Giovanni e Paolo ; and finally, 
again '' The Feast in the House of Simon the 
Leper :" this last picture was ordered for the Ser- 
vites. The French ambassador in Venice had 
caused a large sum to be offered to the fathers by 
order of Louis XIV. in exchange for the picture ; 
they refused ; but the Eepablic^ which was inter- 



Church of San Giovanni e Paolo, with the Monument 
of General CoIIeoni 



PAINTING. 267 

ested in propitiating the King of France, decreed a 
sort of expropriation for the good of the State, and 
caused the picture to be removed and offered to the 
king in the year 1665. Since then we have ob- 
tained '' The Disciples of Emraaus/' which comes 
from the Palais-Royal ; the ceiling at Versailles with 
'' The Titans/' and the Feast which makes the pendant 
to ^' The Marriage at Cana/' in which is the Mag- 
dalene wiping the feet of the Saviour with her hair. 
We have also the ^' Esther '^ and ^^ The Descent 
from the Cross'' — in shorty a number of compositions 
which enable us to judge of the artist, although 
his full glory can really only be seen in his own 
country. 

I have gazed with much interest upon some of 
Veronese's pictures in the decorative style which are 
to be found in the most beautiful villa on Venetian 
territory, the Villa Masere — the home of the eminent 
man whose life I have related in my Patricien de 
Venise. The first of these compositions may be 
called a '^ Mother of Loves," it is painted in 
fresco and placed in a small room in the villa; 
the second is a complete decorative scheme with 
architecture, balcony, soffits, and ceiling. The cen- 
tral design represents Olympus, and, faithful to 
his principle, Veronese mingles earth and empy- 
rean, placing the noble lady of the house in a 
leaning posture on the balcony. A detached angle- 
figure represents Neptune. Two mythological dc- 



268 VENICE. 

signs, the '' Birth of Love " and '^ Apollo and 
Venus/' form part of the same decoration. 

Veronese is so great and brilliant an artist 
that we cannot help lingering over him. We 
have not yet spoken of that ardent and voluptu- 
ous piece which decorates one of the small cham- 
bers of the Ducal Palace, the '^ Eape of Europa/' 
where by an intuition which proves the natural 
affinity of genius, however diversely exercised, 
the painter has interpreted, — and that without 
knowing them, I am sure, — the lints of Ovid 
describing the divine bull licking the feet of 
the beautiful captive. What a magician and what 
a pbet ! Where shall we find such gentle skies, 
or a landscape of such ideal allurement ? I do 
not know who it was that said of this picture 
that it gave one a presentiment of Watteau and 
might have inspired the '^ Departure for Cythera ;'' 
the remark shoAvs a discerning spirit and the 
eye of a painter. But, amidst the crowd of 
these numerous creations, one figure remains al- 
ways in the mind : that white incarnation of 
Venice, in the semblance of a woman seen from 
behind, a figure taken perhaps from among the 
noble ladies of Venice, — so delicate and daintily 
graceful, and yet so grand and opulent, — which 
we see, between the '' Allegory of Faith '' and 
'' St. Justina in the act of rendering homage to 
Christ in Glory,'' on the ceiling of that superb 



PAINTING. 269 

Hall of the Council which was used as a recep- 
tion-room for ambassadors. It is on that ceiling 
also that we admire, thrown into half-light be- 
neath a canopy, that remarkable figure of another 
'^Venice'' seated on a globe, with the Lion of St. 
Mark at her feet, receiving a personified Justice 
who offers up her sword and scales, and a Peace 
who presents her laurel, the symbol of concord. 
Veronese died from a fever caught in follow- 
ing a procession bareheaded. The fathers of St. 
Sebastian wished him to be buried in their 
church ; and with justice, for nowhere had he 
been more brilliant and fertile than in the re- 
ligious decorations done for that building. He 
had two sons, Gabriele and Carle tto ; Gabriele 
was doubtless the name of the eldest son of the 
family, for Paolo's father, who was a sculptor, 
was also called Gabriele. Carletto was also gifted, 
but he died at twenty-six, and most of his pic- 
tures are attributed to his father. Gabriele died 
of the plague in 1631 ; he ended by giving up 
painting. Benedetto Caliari, a brother of Vero- 
nese, was an historian and architect ; together 
with Gabriele and Carletto he completed some 
of Paolo's works. There is another Veronese in 
the history of Venetian art — Alessandro, who had 
the same by-name as Paolo, and whose fixmily 
name was Turchi ; he was a pupil of Felice 
Ricci; he was born in 1600 and died in 1670. 



270 VENICE. 

Zelotti had been a fellow-pupil of Veronese 
under Badile ; he was a painter of merit, who 
is not always allowed his right place ; he liked 
to roam about the world without a fixed home ; 
and died in poverty in 1592, at the age of sixty- 
two. He had had quarrels with Veronese, and 
was thought by his companions to be of a jealous 
disposition. 

Another great personality of the school was 
Tintoret (his name was Jacopo Eobusti) ; he was 
born at Venice in 1512, that is sixteen years 
before Veronese, and died six years after him, 
in 1594. His father was a dyer, from whence 
his name of '^il Tintoretto;" his again was a 
wonderful nature, a genius infinitely productive 
and facile beyond belief. The pupil of Titian, he 
soon rivalled his master, who certainly was not 
tender toward pupils who could aspire to emu- 
late him. I am aware that tales of this kind 
must not be accepted without reserve ; but I find, 
in the earliest writers on art, that Tintoret had 
to leave his master's studio after unpleasantnesses 
which were not of his making. Besides he was 
not long in showing himself without a peer, and 
a genius like his must needs assert itself from 
the first and overcome all opposition. At twenty 
it was already said of him that he was a ftd- 
mine di penneUo, and he was called il furioso. 
It is certain that he painted in such an impet- 



PAINTING. 271 

uous fashion that he seemed to attack his can- 
vas and know no pause till he had completed 
it. He was an anatomist of the first order ; he 
drew w^th skill and accurate knowledge ; he mod- 
elled in clay with singular ability^ made it a 
practice to draw from the skeleton^ and gave 
such force and salience to everything he touched^ 
that the masses, who like the look of life and 
do not always give proper value to the loftiest 
qualities and noblest ideals, soon looked on him 
as the greatest man of his time. 

Tintoret first became known as decorator in 
relief at the Scuola di San Marco, and the Sen- 
ate having distinguished him entrusted to him 
the enormous wall of the Great Council Cham- 
ber, where he painted the gigantic piece repre- 
senting the ^' Glory of Paradise,'' over the ducal 
throne, a Avork which measures no less than 83 
by 34 feet may be considered the largest painting 
on canvas that exists. 

From the Ducal Palace Tintoret passed on to 
the Scuola di San Rocco, and there, the fathers 
of the institution letting him take the bit between 
his teeth, as the saying is, he accomplished a 
perfectly prodigious quantity of work, a quan- 
tity to confound the mind of man. He is a 
master, doubtless, and a great master, — in some 
of his works on the level of the highest ; but 
at San Rocco his painting is black, heavy, often 



272 VENICE, 

sprawling, and admirable in parts only, as for 
example in the hall called the AlbergOj in the 
subject of the Crucifixion. To make sure of 
attaching his signature to this formidable achieve- 
ment, representing acres of painting and armies 
of colossal figures, Tintoret hung over a door 
in the room the portrait of himself which was 
painted at the age of sixty-six. 

After the Scuola, the Duke of Mantua, desir- 
ing to attract Tintoret to his court, commissioned 
him to paint in ten parts a ^^Life of St. Fran- 
cis of Gronzaga," but this was a work of no 
more than a few months for such a man ; and 
afl>er seeing the canvases in their place he re- 
turned to Venice to paint the ^^ Battle of Zara'' 
in the Voting Chamber. 

With such remarkable facility of execution and 
in an age like his, it may be readily conceived 
that Tintoret's brush did not lie idle ; he worked 
incessantly, and it may indeed be said that he 
sometimes worked too rapidly for his fame. A 
saying handed down by the chroniclers says that 
there are three difi'erent Tintorets who worked 
with three different brushes : one of gold, another 
of silver, another of iron, il pennello (TorOj il 
pennello cVargento^ e Valtro di ferro. This was 
the opinion of Carracci, who knows what he is 
talking about ; he left a letter addressed to his 
brother Ludovico^ in which he declares that Tin- 



PAINTING. 273 

toret was sometimes superior to Titian^ but more 
often inferior to himself. 

In character, Robusti was rugged and uncom- 
panionable. He was of a contemplative disposition^ 
and would shut himself up for weeks together seeing 
no one but his daughter, whom he adored, and find- 
ing in music a relief from painting ; he had a certain 
reputation as a player of the double-bass, and we 
have seen that Veronese represented him in the 
^^ Marriage at Cana^' taking part in his orchestra. 
In our day a great artist, M. Robert Fleury, has 
been struck by this characteristic, and has repre- 
sented Tintoret in the same attitude ; and M. Leon 
Coignet has painted a picture showing him at the 
death of his daughter Maria, the only one who was 
left him, two other daughters having taken the veil. 
Maria Tintoretto was an artist of talent, and her 
name will live in history ; she has left works of 
real interest, among others the portrait of Marco 
dei Vescovi and that of Jacopo Strada, a celebrated 
antiquary. Adored by her father, who had made 
her the companion of his life, Maria Tintoretto 
followed him everywhere in the dress of a young 
page. The engraved portrait given in the work of 
Ridolfi, which shows her as she must have ap- 
peared, is not of a kind to charm us, and indeed all 
that I have read about her leads me to suppose that 
she was not beautiful ; but her father worshipped 
her; he taught her to take her part in an orchestra, 

18 



274 VENICE. 

and early initiated her in the art of drawing. Philip 
II. of Spain and the Archduke Ferdinand, each 
wished to have her at his court ; but Tintoretto 
refused this honor for her, and in order to keep her 
near him married her to the only man who had not 
proposed to take her away from Venice and her 
father ; this w^as a German jeweller named Mario 
Augusti. Maria died at thirty, and her death seems 
to have been a terrible blow to the aged Jacopo, 
who himself died four years after her. After her 
death the painter reproduced the features of her 
whom he had loved so welL This incident forms 
the subject of a picture by M. Leon Coignet ; it is 
also the subject of a fine piece by Signor Morelli. 
There is another and less melancholy episode of 
a like dramatic kind in the life of Tint or et, which 
helps us to understand the character of the man and 
the susceptibility of the artist. It was at the time 
when Aretino was the acknowledged leader of 
criticism, and made and unmade reputations with a 
word ; at this time he held for Titian against Tin- 
toret. One day, when he had heard some remark 
which did not please him, Tintoret asked Aretino 
to come and see him, and as soon as the latter had 
crossed the threshold of his house, approached him 
solemnly, a long pistol in his hand, carefully meas- 
ured him with it from head to foot, and then gave 
him good-day, saying '' Know that you measure 
altogether three lengths of my pistol.'' The anec- 



PAINTING. 275 

dote is authentic and vivid ; it had no further con- 
sequence than that of making Aretino the friend 
of the susceptible artist who had thus promised him 
a tragic issue to his jibes. M. Ingres has painted 
this subject twice with variations^ as may be seen 
in the work entitled VCEuvre d'' Ingres engraved 
by Eeveil. 

Robusti's ^^The Miracle of St. Mark" is gene- 
rally considered one of the most important works 
of the artist ; the picture is in the Academy at 
Venice ; its power and vigor are very characteristic 
of the master. Jacopo Robusti lived to the age of 
eighty-two ; he is buried at Santa Maria delF Orto. 
He left two sons ; one of them, Domenico, was a 
portrait painter of some talent. Tintoret^s exact 
place in art is difficult to assign : he is above all 
things an energy and a power, — he rarely touches 
the heartj and I might say does not even dazzle the 
eye as a colorist, for he ^^ paints dark ;" but there 
are certain works of his that are masterpieces, and 
one is amazed to find in the small chamber called 
the Anti-CoUegio adjoining the Hall of the Ambas- 
sadors, four compositions of exquisite grace : the 
^^ Ariadne and Bacchus," ^^ Pallas pursuing Mars," 
the ^^ Forge of Vulcan," and ^^ Mercury and the 
Graces," in which he seems to have sought after 
form with as much care as any of the most illustrious 
designers of this Venetian school. 

For the sake of completeness, in nomenclature at 



276 VENICE. 

least if not in biography and criticism, I should here 
mention the name of Sebastian del Piombo (1485), 
also that of Bassano, two masters who might have 
been the pride of any poorer school. 

Judging the work of Jacopo da Ponte, called ^^ il 
BassanOj" by second-rate specimens alone, one 
would think of him as a sombre colorist and a strag- 
gling designer, interested only in commonplace sub- 
jects, such as kitchen interiors, or Noah leaving the 
ark, and other out-door scenes taken from Scripture 
and treated in a fantastic way. But if you study 
Bassano at Venice, you will take off your hat to him 
as to an artist of unexpected range, elevation, and 
talent. He was born in 1510, was the pupil of his 
father Francesco Bassano, who had studied under 
Giovanni Bellini, and later under Bonifazio (a great 
artist of whom I should like to have spoken at 
length). II Bassano lived little at Venice, but 
settled himself usually at his native Bassano ; it 
was Titian who made his reputation by purchasing 
the ^^ Animals going up into the Ark." By degrees 
he began to be appreciated, and the Senate employed 
him to decorate public buildings ; it is really by 
these decorations that Bassano should be judged, for 
on these great surfaces he is as much at his ease as 
his illustrious rivals. He has the power of giving 
life and reality to his figures, some of which stand 
out in such relief as to seem as though they were 
starting from their frames to meet the spectator. It 



PAINTING. 277 

is said that he did not draw from the nude, and this 
opinion is founded on the fact that in the whole of 
his work there is not a single sacred or allegorical 
, figure that is not draped from head to foot. He has 
left some portraits fine enough to be taken for Tin- 
torets ; he died in 1592, at the age of eighty-two, 
and is buried in San Francesco. 

Bassano left four sons ; the two elder, Francesco 
and Leandro, produced master-works, and the former 
ornamented the walls of the Ducal Palace with grand 
compositions which can hold their own beside the 
works of the greatest Venetian artists. He is the 
painter of the "' Doge Ziani receiving the Sword 
from the Hands of the Pope/' in the Hall of the 
Great Council. This Francesco died in a strange 
way ; he was so eager over his work that he con- 
tracted a high fever ; he fancied himself surrounded 
by archers of the Guard and threatened with im- 
prisonment. In the course of the year 1594, when 
he was forty-four years old, he opened his window, 
threw himself down on the flagstones and died on 
the spot. 

Leandro held a distinguished place in the school ; 
he survived his brother a long time. The greater 
number of the paintings which decorate the Hall of 
the Council of Ten are by him. The Doge Grimani 
was his patron, and he received the gold chain of a 
knight of St. Mark. Leandro died at the age of 
sixty-five, in 1623. There are portraits of these sons 



278 VENICE. 

and almost equals of Jacopo da Ponte^ after the 
work, so well known in Italy, of the painter Carlo 
Ridolfi. 

Andrea Schiavone is a touching character, always 
in difficulties, yet proud and dignified ; and his 
talent has in it something penetrating that goes 
straight to the heart. He was born in Dalmatia, in 
the pretty little town of Sebenico, where the life has 
the charm of ancient Greece. Titian, who instead 
of being jealous of him, as he was of Tintoret, 
found a savor of originality in his style and coloring, 
asked for his help in the great compositions of the 
Libreria Vecchia which are now destroyed. Tin- 
toret also did him great honor in always holding him 
up as a model to his pupils. He was, however, an 
artist who in his own time was only appreciated by 
brother artists ; he had the greatest difficulty in 
making a living, and his only consolation was in the 
friendship and esteem of the most illustrious of his 
contemporaries. Aretino loved him and furnished 
him with subjects for pictures ; but this did not in- 
crease his riches, and poor Schiavone went about the 
streets in rags. He died in 1582 without leaving 
enough even to pay for his funeral, which created 
much compassion among the Venetians. 

Bartolomeo Veneziano has left only three paint- 
ings, two of which are masterpieces. He lived 
about 1540. Another painter of the same date is 
Gerome Muziano, born of a noble family in 1528 at 



PAINTING. 279 

Aqua Fredda ; he painted in Eome for Gregory 
XIII., married there and became the protege of 
Cardinal d'Este, whose villa he decorated at Tivoli ; 
he lived all his life by the orders he received from 
the Pope and the Cardinals. He died in 1590 and 
is buried in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. 

Giuseppe Porta also belongs to this generation ; 
born in 1535 at Castello Nuovo della Garfignana^ 
he died at Venice in 1585. He was the pupil of 
Salviati ; he painted some large compositions in the 
chambers of the Vatican for Pope Pius IV., and his 
success at Rome greatly furthered his career at 
Venice. He was one of the many artists employed 
by the Republic to represent its historical events, 
and his works are sometimes attributed to men more 
famous than their real author, men of such pre- 
eminence in the school of Venice that they extin- 
guish all lesser lights about them. Giuseppe Porta 
was a man of learning, and occupied himself with 
mathematics and chemistry. 

We have now come to the end of the sixteenth 
century, and a number of secondary painters might 
still be mentioned ; for it is amazing to realize the 
wealth of talent and vigor of this generation of the 
Renaissance ; but with the seventeenth century 
begins the decadence of the school, which however 
could still boast such names as Andrea Pozzo (1642 
to 1709) and Sebastian Ricci, born at Belluno in 
1659 and died in 1734. Ricci had the temperament 



280 VENICE. 

of a decorative painter ; he was akin to the French 
painters of the eighteenth century^ whom he only- 
preceded for a short time ; his designs are confused 
but brilliant^ full of affectation^ but with a richness 
of invention which gives them their value ; he is a 
painter in the literal sense of the word, often full of 
a fascinating and original charm. He painted at 
Rome, Milan, London, Bologna, Piacenza, Vienna 
and Florence. His subjects were chiefly mytho- 
logical or historical ; he was a kind of heroic Fran- 
cois Boucher, with more fire, perhaps, and even 
greater facility ; he had as thorough a knowledge 
of perspective as the greatest painters of the best 
time, and spent more ingenuity and intellect than 
sentiment in those great pictorial schemes in w^hich 
he convoked the whole of Olympus to the banquet 
of the gods. I was surprised to come upon Ricci 
again in some enormous wall paintings at Chelsea 
Hospital ; the English had adopted him ; as indeed 
at that time Italy alone Avas supposed to possess this 
special art of the pictorial decoration of vast sur- 
faces. Romanelli and Pellegrini painted in France, 
Ricci in London ; Tiepolo was destined to cover 
with his singular paintings the great halls of the 
Palace at Madrid and those of the Prince-Bishop at 
Wiirzburg. 

Antonio Balestra lived from 1666 to 1740. Ve- 
rona is the place to see him at his best. He had made 
his home there, and his works are to be found at the 



Detail from Basilica of- St* Mark's 



PAINTING. 281 

Carmelites, at San Vitale, St. Benedict, and at Santa 
Maria in Organo. After him in chronological order 
come Rosalba, Piazzetta, Antonio Canale called 
Canaletto, Guardi, Tiepolo, and Longhi : these are 
the last really important names of the Venetian 
school. 

Let us see briefly who the Rosalba was — that 
charming personality with which France fell in 
love because she seemed a reflection of her own 
eighteenth-century school, and because her works, 
light as the powder the painter tries to fix on his 
canvas, were as brilliant as herself, and reflected 
faithfully an era full of vivacity, light gallantry, and 
refinement. 

Rosa- Alba Carriera was born at Venice in 1672 ; 
she was the granddaughter of a second-rate painter 
and her father was a draughtsman. She began by 
making point-lace ; but as she tried at the same time 
to paint from the models which fell into her hands, a 
Venetian banker, who was a neighbor, and interested 
in her growing talents, lent her some fine studies by 
Baroccio ; the copies which she made of them cre- 
ated such surprise among the connoisseurs of the 
town, that her father sent her to Diamantino, a 
painter much thought of in Venice at the time, 
though forgotten now. Under him she made rapid 
progress, and by the advice of a friend gave herself 
up to the charming art of miniature painting. Her 
success dates from this period ; she used the method 



282 VENICE. 

of pastel; made fanciful figures and portraits which 
were famous for their grace and for their rich and 
refined coloring. The King of Denmark, passing 
through Venice, fell in love with these fresh and 
piquant pastel-portraits, which had the merit of 
showing under the most favorable aspect the fea- 
tures of the beautiful Venetian women of the time. 
Thenceforward '^la Rosalba" enjoyed- the real ap- 
preciation of the whole of Europe ; the Academies 
of Rome and Florence, the Institute of Bologna, sent 
her their diplomas, and enrolled her among their 
foreign members. The Duke of Tuscany asked her 
for her portrait for the famous gallery in which 
figure all the great artists of the world. She had 
a brother-in-law, a certain Pellegrini, a Venetian 
painter who had been summoned to Paris by the fa- 
mous Crozat, to decorate the ceiling of the Bank ; 
she followed him to that city ; the King of France sat 
to her, and she was feted and honored in all the 
salons of Paris and visited by the most celebrated 
artists of the day. On the 26th October 1720 the 
Academy of Painting received her as a member, and 
she painted as her diploma picture a ^' Muse '' which 
is in the Louvre gallery. Our public collections are 
very rich in the works of Rosalba. Some of them 
possess a finished grace and power of color that are 
surprising ; among them all none is more attractive 
than the little pale face of a young girl with her 
monkey^ which is the cabinet of pastel-drawings in 



PAINTING. 283 

the Louvre. The well-known amateur, M. Plot, also 
possesses a number of the works of La Rosalba. 

From Paris, she proceeded to Vienna, where the 
Emperor Charles VL, the Empress, and all the Arch- 
duchesses wanted to sit to her. Her fortune was 
made, and nothing more was wanting to her fame as 
an artist. 

She returned finally to Venice, where she died in 
1757 at the age of eighty-five. During the latter 
years of her life she had become blind, but she never 
ceased to surround herself with the choicest spirits 
and the most remarkable artists of her time. Ro- 
salba was not so beautiful as some of her contempo- 
raries wished to prove ; she might easily have tried 
to deceive posterity when she sat to herself before 
her mirror, but she was very honest, and the por- 
traits she has left of herself show more intelligence 
than beauty in her face. It is said that she was a 
musician, and she had sisters gifted with all kinds of 
talents, clever as fairies ; they played chamber-music 
together. Rosalba deserves a kindly mention in 
these rapid sketches of Venetian painters ; she re- 
calls characteristics of the French artists of the age 
of Louis XV. 

The eighteenth century is the century of theatres, 
ceremonials, and fetes at Venice ; the Queen of the 
Adriatic, so powerful in other days, has no strength 
left except for pleasure. The last great painters 
whose names she inscribed in the Golden Book are 



284 VENICE. 

certiiinly not unworthy to figure beside those of their 
ancestors ; only, being born in an age of political 
decadence^ they have fallen into affectation and 
mannerism. Still they are painters of the great 
stock ; and among them all I will select six of thq 
most brilliant names : Giambattista Tiepolo, Antonio 
Canaletto^ Francesco Guardi^ Pietro Longhi ; and a 
little lower than these must be placed the names of 
Giovanni-Battista Piazzetta and Alessandro Longhi. 

Giambattista Tiepolo was an artist of high aims, 
who, if he had been born a century sooner^ would 
have been a rival of Veronese ; those who have 
studied him at Venice, at Wiirzburg, and at Madrid, 
will not hesitate to say that he is a man of genius ; 
but he is evidently the outcome of his age, and bears 
its peculiar marks. What we have said so often 
must be repeated here : Art is a mirror, reflecting 
accurately the men and things of its time. 

Born in 1692, Tiepolo studied under Lazzarini, 
and from the age of sixteen showed himself gifted 
with such facility that he already enjoyed public 
favor. He had been much struck by Eicci, and 
Veronese was the model he studied with most perse- 
verance. In quantity he produced perhaps as much 
as any of the most prolific artists of the Renaissance, 
and produced it with as much facility. At the 
Palazzo Dolfin, at Zattere, at the Rezonnico and 
Labbia Palaces, at the church of the Gesu, at the 
Scalzi, at the Palace of the Prince-Archbishop, at 



PAINTING. 285 

the Palace of Madridj he executed frescoes of enor- 
mous size which may bear comparison with the finest 
compositions of the great masters. Among the fine 
photographs from Tiepolo made by Naja of Venice 
are two splendid subjects from the story of Antony 
and Cleopatra — '' The Banquet/^ where the Queen 
dissolves the pearl, and '^ The Departure/' where 
the master of the world is about to embark with the 
Queen. Tiepolo died at Madrid in 1767 ; Charles 
III. had summoned him tliere^ and he established 
himself there with his son^ in spite of Mengs^ the 
Maella, and the Bayeu^ who could not compete with 
his prodigious facility. 

His son Giovanni Domenico was born at Venice 
in 1726 ; he worked a great deal with his father at 
Madrid and was a very skilful etcher ; he has given 
us a series of twenty-seven subjects, the " Flight and 
Eepose of the Holy Family in Egypt /' a series of 
twenty-six heads in character, after the manner of 
Benedetto Castiglione, a '' March to Calvary '' in 
fourteen parts, '^ The Republic of Venice and Nep- 
tune/' and a number of sacred subjects. He also 
painted some frescoes at Brescia, and died at the end 
of the eighteenth century at an advanced age. 

Even in a general glance at the school, it is im- 
possible to pass by so singular a personality as 
Giovanni-Battista Piazzetta. This artist exercised 
great influence over Tiepolo, who, however, it is 
right to say soon shook himself free from his influ- 



286 VENICE. 

ence. Plazzetta has a manner of working entirely 
his own^ and among that school of decorators a dis- 
tinct individuality which produced a whole series of 
imitators^ as Francesco Potozzo^ Domenico Mag- 
giottOj Marinetti called Chioggiotto, a painter of 
real talent, to whom, in galleries out of Venice, the 
pictures of Piazzetta are very often attributed. Piaz- 
zetta was also a decorator, but he fell into an exag- 
geration fatal to the quality of his painting; he 
threw strong artificial light on the outlines of his 
groups and faces, as if the rays of a torch amid the 
darkness were to light up the outlines of a statue, 
leaving its whole mass in shadow. There is, it is 
true, some attempt at half-tones and a certain 
amount of detail within these opaque shadows, but 
with time the modellings have disappeared, and most 
of the works of this painter have grown so black, 
that nothing remains but contrasted values, — the 
high lights along the outlines coarsely though always 
cleverly indicated, and the general masses, of which 
all the half-tones are lost in solid shadow. He 
painted at Padua, at Bologna, in a great many 
churches at Venice, leaving there many easel-pic- 
tures, and very beautiful designs. It is known that 
he modelled in wax, studying and lighting up* his 
groups on little models, a practice which affords a 
plausible explanation of the effects he usually pro- 
duced. 

Antonio Canale, called Canaletto, is another strong 



PAINTING. 287 

individuality of the school, and the incarnation of 
that art which had for its object the topographical 
representation of the unparalleled city. His fol- 
lower Guardi certainly was a man of more mind and 
a more thorough artist ; but he, Canaletto^ in his 
best work renders the aspects of Venice as no one 
else was capable of rendering them^ and when he 
keeps clear, as he does not at all times, of the fault 
of mere trade fabrication, it is he who gives the 
most vivid and just idea of those magic scenes. The 
view of the ^^ Madonna della Salute'' in the Louvre 
is a perfect specimen of the great master's talent. 

Canaletto was born at Venice on the 18th October, 
1697, and died there the 20th of August, 1768. 
His father Bernardo Canale was a scene-painter, and 
sent his son to Rome, where he devoted himself 
principally to copying the antique monuments of the 
city, and ruins in the surrounding landscapes. On 
his return to Venice he had an idea which seems 
simple enough, but was nevertheless a stroke of 
genius, that of looking about him and painting what 
he saw. His success was soon assured ; he was sum- 
moned to London, and lived there for two years, 
from 1746 to 1748 ; this accounts for the numerous 
views of that city by his hand which are to be found 
in English collections. Tiepolo has sometimes put 
in the figures of Canaletto's pictures. It must be 
said that toward the end of his life, Canaletto 
opened a kind of manufactory where painting was 



288 VENICE. 

done by rule of thumb, with colors all prepared for 
Avater, buildings, and skies respectively. He has left 
a very strong mark of his personality in a series of 
very spirited etchings ; they are perhaps more in- 
teresting than his pictures because they are more 
characteristic. 

We must make mention of a nephew of Canale, 
Bernardo Bellotto, whose pictures now at Dresden 
and Vienna are excellent for relief and perspective. 
He was painter to Augustus IH., and died at War- 
saw about 1780. His ability as an artist has not 
been surpassed ; few of his pictures are to be found 
in Italy, but the great German galleries contain 
many. 

Although Guardi was born some time after Longhi, 
he must be compared with Canaletto, for in spite of 
the contrast between the two in the manner of exe- 
cution they both draw their inspiration from the 
same source. Francesco Guardi was born in 1712 
and died in 1793. He first painted architecture, 
then followed in the steps of Canaletto but from the 
first stroke of his brush he showed himself more vi- 
vacious than his predecessor ; he is a more original 
colorist, has a more distinctive talent, and is in his 
own line unsurpassable when he takes the trouble to 
follow out and execute his idea. He enjoyed an 
honorable reputation in his own day, but it may fairly 
be said that it is by our generation that he has been 
discovered and set in his right place. His extraor- 



PAINTING. 289 

dinary facility^ his sparkling execution and poetic 
gracCj joined to unsurpassed qualities of atmosphere, 
transparency and light, make of him an exceptional 
artist, in comparison with whom Canaletto himself, 
masterly as he is in pictures like the '' Grand Canal '' 
and the ^^ Church of the Salute '' of the Louvre, be- 
comes cold and expressionless. Guardi produced a 
great deal : in a single Venetian collection (Giacomo 
delle Lena) thirty-two Guardis were counted ; these 
are now in England. The English collection richest 
in Guardi and Canaletto is that of Sir Kichard Wal- 
lace, who has added still further to it by acquiring 
the four famous pendants of the Morny collection, 
which are perhaps the finest examples the master 
ever painted. Pietro Longhi painted in 1764 a por- 
trait of Guardi ; it is in the Correr Museum, and 
Longhi has written his friend's name at the back of 
the picture with his own hand, so that the portrait is 
doubly celebrated. The Louvre is rich in charming 
examples of the master. One of his brilliant works 
is the '^ Espousals of the Doge with the Adriatic.'^ 

Pietro Longhi has set forth better than any 
one the intimate life of the eighteenth century at 
Venice ; he corresponds exactly to those French 
artists who are so much the fashion noAV, — Char- 
din, Lancret, Pater, Baudouin, Moreau, etc. etc.; 
but Longhi is what is called a realist, painting 
only what he saw, and less conventional than the 
artists I have just mentioned. Born at Venice 

19 



290 VENICE. 

in 1702 and dying in 1785^ he reflected Vene- 
tian life for sixty years with an accuracy, good 
humor, and fidelity, which have made of his pic- 
tures so many pages of history. They are noth- 
ing but conversations, musical parties, academies, 
supper parties, visits to convents, dancing lessons, 
graceful minuets, fancy balls, episodes of the Ei- 
dotto, — a thousand little agreeable scenes in which 
he displays delicacy and fancy. Pietro Longhi 
had also his nobler side and his loftier aims ; he 
painted a large fresco in the Sagredo Palace, the 
^^Fall of the Giants,'' and there are preserved 
a number of family portraits of some merit by 
him. The Morosini Palace at Venice, and the 
cabinet of Mr. Eawdon Brown, the learned his- 
torian for so many years resident at Venice, con- 
tain many very brilliant examples of this master, 
and the collection of the Municipal Museum at 
Venice exhibits a very interesting series. 

Alessandro Longhi, the author of a volume, or 
rather an album, entitled Vite dei Pittori, was 
the son of Pietro ; he was born in 1733 and 
died in 1813. He is the last artist we shall no- 
tice as expressing the genius of Venice. Longhi 
is a very skilful etcher, and, although he painted 
some pictures in the style commonly associated 
with his father, is above all a portrait painter. 
Much esteemed in Venetian society, he has left 
in the palaces of the city a number of large 



PAINTING. 291 

pictures, under which the name of Pietro has 
often been written ; he has given us the pretty 
series of etchings after the pictures of his father, 
now beginning to be rare and to fetch long prices 
at sales. 

Alessandro is the last artist of the Venetian 
school whose name we shall mention, as he died 
in 1813 ; the Republic had ceased to exist for 
sixteen years, and he brings us to the threshold 
of the nineteenth century. 

We repeat that we have not pretended to write 
a history of Venetian painting, but have desired 
only to give an idea of the great personages of 
the school ; to show the unbroken chain from the 
Muranese and Paduans down to the last painters 
of the past century ; to sketch the portraits of the 
great characters ; to point out especially Carpac- 
cio, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, 
Tintoretto, and Tiepolo ; leaving necessarily in 
shadow the great names which honor any school, 
such as Sebastian del Piombo, Bonifazio, Brusa- 
sorci, Maganza, Pietro Malombra, Santo Peranda, 
and many more who would now be placed in the 
highest rank, but whom we are forced, by the 
wealth of genius produced by Venice, to leave in 
the background, so as to give place to those 
mightier names which spring first to the mind of 
any one speaking of color and light beneath the 
sky of Venice. 



CHAPTER XV. 
PKTNTING— THE LITEKAEY MOVEMENT. 

Now we propose to review in one general glance 
two very vast subjects ; Venetian literature, and 
the art of printing, which was practised with such 
brilliant success at Venice. Each of these sub- 
jects, which no one will be surprised to see brought 
together here, might claim a detailed treatment 
in a special volume ; we hope nevertheless that 
in following our plan of a rapid summary we 
shall be found to have passed over no important 
element of the matter. It is deliberately, and 
wdth the object of presenting a general picture of 
the arts and industries of Venice, that we keep 
within limits it would be so easy to exceed. 

Printing, which is always a valuable servant to 
thought, has at Venice closer relations with thought 
than anywhere else. First, because the literary 
effort at Venice was at one time especially directed 
to popularizing by the press the masterpieces of 
antiquity which it successively rescued from ob- 
livion ; and also, because the comparative freedom 
and power of the great Venetian printing-houses 
allowed of books being freely written and circulated 

292 



THE LITERAEY MOVEMENT. 293 

in Venice which it would have been difficult to 
bring out elsewhere. Besides this, typography as 
an art stands at the head of those lesser arts^ artes 
minoreSy with which we shall presently be engaged^ 
— popular arts from which prosperous epochs have 
everywhere derived a familiar glory often much 
more lasting than any other. 

Literature at Venice took none of those grand 
flights which carry us into the highest regions of 
thought and imagination ; positive^ and in some 
sort utilitarian, it is commonly but the reflection 
of the acute and observant policy of the govern- 
ment under which it was developed. What gives 
it its value and power is that its principal works 
have been inspired strictly by the actual daily 
facts of the civil and political life of the State. 
Thus it is that geography and the art of navigation, 
as well as that of naval construction, owe their first 
progress to Venetian literature^ and that Venice pro- 
duced an admirable literature of voyages and trav- 
els, besides political writers and orators of the first 
class at a time when political eloquence existed no- 
where else ; and that, situated as a geographical link 
between Greece and central Europe, she was natu- 
rally led to take a very great part in the growth of 
Hellenic studies. 

We shall begin with historic literature. History 
at Venice was written by decree of the State ; the 



294 VENICE. 

Senate took a pleasure in seeking out the most dis- 
tinguished writers to compile the annals of the Re- 
public ; and if these were not to be found among her 
own citizens they would be converted into such by 
adoption. A case in point was that of Antonio Sa- 
bellico, the first writer deputed to disentangle the 
chronicles, already numerous, which were written 
during the Middle Ages; his voluminous work, writ- 
ten in Latin in thirty-three books, extends from the 
founding of Venice to 1487, the year of its publica- 
tion. The chosen writer was furnished with mate- 
rials, and the archives of the Republic were put at his 
disposal, which thus gave to the population of to-day 
its history of yesterday. A little later, the illustri- 
ous Cardinal Bembo was charged to carry on the 
work of Sabellico ; his narrative ends with the year 
1513. Paolo Paruta, a famous political writer, con- 
tinued the work of Bembo ; his work ends with an 
account of the war in Cyprus, the dramatic episodes 
of which held all Europe in excitement. The Re- 
public lost Cyprus: this was the last Turkish con- 
quest in the Mediterranean. Among the successors 
of Paruta were Andrea Morosini, Battista Nani, Mi- 
chele Foscarini, and the Senator Pietro Garzoni. 
This official history was brought to a close in 1713. 
Its weakness is accounted for by its origin ; although 
doubtless the principle intended to guide the State 
historian was that of writing so that future genera- 
tions might profit by the story of the past. But, by 



Group of the Four Emperors^ Basilica of St* Mark's 



THE LITERARY MOVEMENT. 295 

the side of this official history, what a number of ad- 
mirable chronicles ! — among which we cannot pass in 
silence the celebrated Diaries of Marino Sanuto. 
This journal, written from day to day by a Venetian 
statesman in a perfect position for seeing and know- 
ing everything, is the most important historical docu- 
ment of the Renaissance. Begun in 1496, it was 
finished in 1535, and comprises fifty-seven folio vol- 
umes ; it was a treasure hidden from all eyes for three 
centuries, but modern historians have drawn largely 
from it. 

On the same principle the merchants and explorers 
of Venice wrote narratives of their adventures on 
their return. After wandering over the world, they 
sought to guide the wanderings of others, and to 
open up new roads for the industries of their country. 
Peaceful apostles of commerce and exchange, not 
seeking to alter the manners or to transform the 
beliefs of the countries they visited, they were 
heartily welcomed, and allowed to penetrate every- 
where without difficulty. 

The narrative of Marco Polo's voyages in the far 
East forms the most marvellous lyric of the Middle 
Ages. The book was written in French ^^ parleure 
plus deletable et plus commune a toute gens,'' by 
Rusticiano of Pisa, in 1298, from the dictation of 
the author himself. The narratives of Marco Polo 
were for a long time looked upon as in great part 
fabulous ; but modern criticism has recognized their 



296 VENICE. 

truthj even to the smallest details. Malte-Brun has 
called him the father of geography in Asia^ the 
Humboldt of the thirteenth centmy. 

In 1380j two Venetian travellers of noble family, 
Niccolo and Antonio Zeni, driven by the chances of 
their seafaring toward the North Pole, visited Nor- 
way^ then little known, discovered Iceland and 
Greenland, and touched on the coast of Labrador, 
the northernmost region of the New World, just one 
century before Christopher Columbus. The original 
reports of Antonio Zeno, who stayed fourteen years in 
those regions, are unfortunately lost; there has been 
preserved only a short analysis made by one of his 
descendants. 

In 1454, another young nobleman, of only two- 
and-twenty, Alvisio Ca da Mosto, fired by accounts 
of voyages to the north and south, resolved to try 
and find a new passage. After passing the Straits 
of Gibraltar, those Pillars of Hercules of the an- 
cients, he visited Madeira, the Canaries, Cape Bian- 
co, Senegal, and discovered the Cape Verd Islands, 
that last stage from which Columbus w^as to start for 
the New World. The reports of Ca da Mosto are 
very elaborate and of the greatest interest. The oc- 
cupation of Madeira at that time dated back only 
twenty-four years, and the habits of the negroes on 
the coast of Africa, concerning which he gives many 
details, were then entirely unknown. 

It should be observed that Venetian travellers 



THE LITERARY MOVEMENT. 297 

were full of resource in going through these far-off 
countries ; full of sagacity for studying manners and 
institutions, collecting with care all that related to 
commerce and exchange, they also knew how to draw 
nautical and geographical charts to serve as guides 
to their successors. All those descriptions of unin- 
habited islands with splendid vegetation where the 
rarest birds allow themselves to be caught without 
fear of man, those vivid pictures of countries still in 
the state of savage innocence, struck the imagination 
forcibly and filled young men with a desire ,for dis- 
tant voyages and new discoveries. 

The accounts of voyages by Venetian travellers 
are so numerous that we must renounce the idea of 
giving even their titles, and refer those of our readers 
who wish to know more of them to the learned work of 
Cardinal Turla : Bi Marco Polo e degli altri Viaggia- 
tori Vene^iani piu ilhtstri. One of the last services 
rendered by Venice to the history of geography is 
the large publication of J. B. Eamusio : Delle Navi- 
gazioni e Viaggi, three thick folio volumes. This 
learned work cost its author a lifetime of care and 
research : among the great number of accounts it 
contains are many which would certainly have been 
lost later if they had not been collected in the six- 
teenth century. 

The commerce of Venice with the Levant also 
served to encourage Hellenic studies in Europe. 
Besides making frequent voyages to Byzantium, the 



298 VENICE. 

Venetians inhabited a whole quarter of their own in 
that citjj and the Greeks formed a large colony at 
Venice. This daily contact had made the Greek 
language familiar^ and it had become the fashionable 
study among the educated young nobles. History 
records the fact that a public professorship for the 
study of Greek was founded at Venice toward the 
end of the fourteenth century. At Eome the Church 
was hostile to Greek schismatics^ and Venice, where 
religious tolerance had always been great, was their 
principal refuge in Italy. It was for reasons of this 
kind that Cardinal Bessarion bequeathed his fine 
collection of Greek manuscripts to the Republic. 
Besides, the movement in the direction of Hellenic 
studies was not a mere chance, it was the natural 
consequence of the revival of literature in Italy in 
the fourteenth century : a last step that remained to 
climb. Venice was in a wonderfully good position 
for seconding this movement, and when Aldus Ma- 
nutius established there his press for printing Greek 
types, it was because he had no choice. No other 
town could have supplied him with the numerous 
co-operators necessary to carry out this difficult 
enterprise. He proposed to put within reach of 
everybody the fragments which are left to us from 
the great shipwreck of the masterpieces of Greek 
literature during the Middle Ages. 

To the prodigious activity of Aldus the elder we 
owe — to take only editiones jorincipes — that is to say, 



THE LTTERAEY MOVEMENT. 299 

writings which had not been printed before his time 
— the works of Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch's Moralia, 
Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Sophocles, Aris- 
tophanes, Demosthenes, the collection of the orators 
and rhetoricians, Athenseus, Dioscorides, without 
counting the vocabularies of Pollux, Stephanus of 
Byzantium, Hesychius, and a crowd of commenta- 
tors, astronomers and epistolographers. It is as- 
tounding that one man could have accomplished 
such a task in the space of twenty years (1495 to 
1515), when it is remembered that besides these 
Greek books he published also an immense number 
of Latin classics, and the works of celebrated Italian 
poets. A learned Greek scholar of our day who 
was also a great printer, M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot, 
first coupled the name of Aldus Manutius with 
Greek studies at Venice. We refer the reader to 
his book. Aide Manuce et VHellenisme a Venise^ a 
work full of learning most agreeably put, and as 
easy to read as a romance, for all details connected 
with that brilliant campaign of Aldus Manutius, in 
which learned men of Venice were his best lieuten- 
ants. 

Italian poetry occupies but a secondary place in 
Venetian literature ; there is no star of the first 
magnitude in her pleiad. This weakness may per- 
haps be attributed to the softness and charming 
vivacity of the Venetian dialect, spoken in private 
life and used in the Senate and the law-courts. The 



300 VENICE. 

same phenomenon is found in other parts of Italy : 
at Milan, Bologna, and Naples for instance, Avhere- 
ever the spoken dialect, softened and moulded by 
use, has raised itself to the dignity of a true lan- 
guage written and used for literature. From the 
daily use of such a dialect those who use it have 
acquired an incapacity to express themselves in pure 
Tuscan, the language of poetry, — something like 
the lack of sustaining power we find in poets who 
write in a dead language. 

Among the innumerable poets who swarmed at 
Venice in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, we 
scarcely know whom to mention except Pietro 
Bembo, that master of the beautiful tongue dove il 
si suona ; he stands at the head of the sonneteers, 
pale imitators of Petrarch, a style very much out 
of fashion now. In that first half of the sixteenth 
century, after the fall of the Florentine Republic 
and the occupation of Milan and Naples by the 
Spaniards, a crowd of writers fleeing from the 
tyranny of the alien took refuge at Venice, where 
it was allowable to say almost anything so long as it 
did not touch upon the policy of the Most Serene 
Republic; among the best of these we should name 
Molza, Berni, Ludovico Dolce, Francesco Doni, 
Niccolo Franco, Hortensio, Lando, Domenichino, 
Girolamo Rucellai, Alessandro Piccolomini, Sperone 
Speroni, Francesco Sansovino, etc., etc. ; all these 
writers produced enormously, and though foreigners 



THE LITER AKY MOVEMENT. 301 

still belonged to that literary movement of which 
Venice was the theatre. If there is one who de- 
serves to be brought into special notice among the 
rest, it is certainly Pietro Aretino^ whom his contem- 
poraries surnamed il divino — as we still say la diva 
in speaking of a great singer. 

Neither the fame which surrounded him during 
his life^ nor the infamy which clung to his name 
after his death^ have ever been satisfactorily ex- 
plained, in spite of the many essays of which he 
has been the subject. Titian has left us a superb 
impression of that bold and powerful head ; the 
gold chain that hangs on his breast was sent him 
by Francis I., and the lion's muzzle to the right 
seems to symbolize the standard of St. Mark under 
which he had taken refuge. Aretino certainly holds 
a considerable place in the literature of the time. 
His talent is undeniable ; he attempted without in- 
feriority almost all styles in poetry and prose. 
Among his dramatic works, his tragedy of Oramo 
is certainly the best produced in the sixteenth 
century, and may even be read after that of the 
great Corneille. He had conceived the idea of an 
epistolary correspondence with a number of the 
most illustrious personages, whom he fleeced gaily 
by dealing them out praises or blame according to 
his treatment at their hands with an effrontery 
unsurpassed to this day. Charles V. and Francis I. 
were among his tributaries. From time to time he 



302 VENICE. 

collected and published in volumes these letters of 
flattery or invective. The novelty of this kind of 
writing made the letters eagerly sought after ; and 
they are still very curious reading. Aretino had 
besides a whole outfit of religious writings, a Genesis 
— four books on the Humanity of Christ — the Pas- 
sion vividly described — a version of the Psalms — 
a Life of the Virgin — of St. Thomas — and of St. 
CatherinCj behind which he intrenched himself at 
need, and which had very nearly been the means 
of making him a prince of the Eoman Church ; at 
least he himself says that he refused a Cardinal's 
hat. If this distinction was offered to him, which 
is very doubtful, it must certainly have been before 
the publication of his famous satirical dialogues, 
in which the looser life of his time, and es- 
pecially that of the monks and cardinals, is 
painted with a crudity of color that raised a great 
clamor and proved the stumbling-block of his repu- 
tation. He had laid hands upon the ark of the 
covenant, and from this he never recovered ; he was 
put to the ban of public opinion and long remained 
there. In the meantime, Aretino lived gaily and 
splendidly at Venice, in a palace on the Eiva Car- 
bone, surrounded by beautiful women who were 
called the Aretines, and by artists and musicians, 
and in close intimacy with his two gossips, Titian 
and the celebrated architect Jacopo Sansovino. He 
saw edition multiplied upon edition of those writings 



THE LITERARY MOVEMENT. 303 

which daily increased his influence^ he was a char- 
tered libertinCj and in exchange for all this freedom 
he was only required to be respectful to the Re- 
public. Aretino, however, was an exception among 
the starving herd of authors, and this prosperity 
procured him a great many envious enemies. 

The Venetian dialect, of the caressing softness 
and sparkling charm of which we have spoken, sup- 
plied a better contingent than this to poetry. Ru- 
zante, Calmo, Goldoni used it in writing their come- 
dies ; it had its mock epics, of which the best known 
are, / fatti e le prode^^e di Manoli Blessi StratiotOy 
by Burchiella; the Naspo hizaro of Alessandro 
Caravia ; and that singular poem, La Carta del 
Navegar pitorescaj by the painter Marco Boschini, 
well known by lovers of art ; but its real triumph 
is in the satires and love-poems of Maffeo Venier, 
of BafFo, and of Labbia. In our day, Gritti and 
Pietro Buratti have added honor to their native 
dialect ; the greater part of these works will be 
found in a collection of twelve volumes entitled, 
Collenone delle migliori Poesie scritte in dialetto 
Veneziano, It is needless to ask whether stage 
plays found many partisans among a society so 
lettered. Comedy was played more or less univer- 
sally at Venice during the fifteenth and sixteenth 
centuries ; as an interlude at patrician banquets, and 
in theatres improvised by pleasure societies and 
literary academies; especially during the Carnival. 



304 VENICE. 

Permanent public theatres did not anywhere exist 
at that time. We find in Venice and its neighbor- 
hood in the fourteenth century, among the ancestors 
of the modern drama, the tragedy of E^zelino, by 
Alberto Musalo of Padua, on a contemporary subject 
as sombre and dramatic as the fall of the Nibelungen, 
and also Death of Achilles^ by A. Loschi of Vicenza. 
Both of these works are written in Latin and 
formed after the model of the dramas of ^schylus. 
In the following century, Sicco Polutone wrote, also 
at Padua, the first Italian comedy in prose. This 
work is very little known and extremely rare, as it 
has not been reprinted since the year 1482 ; indeed 
there exists now only one copy, that of the Marciana 
at Venice ; it is a most singular work in its relation 
to the language and manners of the time. 

The sacred dramas known by the name of rappre- 
senta^ioni^ which were very much the fashion 
throughout Italy, where they were acted in the 
churches, seem not to have succeeded in Venice ; 
the privileges of the clergy were more limited there 
than elsewhere, and the public taste was in favor of 
more worldly amusements. It was in Venice that 
the first celebrated comedians appeared — Angelo 
Beolco, surnamed '^ Ruzante,'' was, like Moliere and 
Shakespeare, a dramatic poet, the director of a troop 
of actors, and an actor himself. Ruzante was born 
at Padua in 1502 ; he died in 1542. His comedies, 
which are rather numerous, were written in the 



THE LITERARY MOVEMENT. 305 

Paduan dialect. Andrea Calmo of Venice, born in 
1510; a contemporary and rival of Ruzante, was 
also a dramatic poet and an actor ; he excelled, it is 
said, in the part of Zane or Pantaloon. There are 
six comedies of his written in the Venetian dialect, 
they have often been reprinted. Another popular 
Venetian poet, Antonio Molino, surnamed ^^ il Bnr- 
chiella,'' who lived a little later than the two first 
mentioned, has also left the reputation of having 
been a good comedian. If we add to these the 
names of Francesco Cherrea, Valerie Zuccato the 
master mosaist, and his wife Polonia, of Ludovico 
Dolce, Trapolini, Vicenza Armani, called la dotta^ 
of Luigi Grotto the blind man of Adria, another 
poet who filled the part of CEdipus in a version of 
Sophocles represented at the inauguration of the 
Olympic theatre of Palladio in 1585, we shall have 
collected all that tradition has preserved to us on 
this curious subject. 

It was toward the end of the sixteenth century 
that the first permanent public theatre was opened, 
at San Cassiano ; it is not possible to assign an ex- 
act date to this novelty. Flaminio Scala, called 
^^ Flavio,'^ who ought certainly to be considered as 
the creator of the comedy delV arte^ that is to say 
of improvised comedy, was then the favorite master 
of the Venetian stage. He had trained a troop of 
comedians under the name of comici gclosij one of 
whom was Isabella Andreini of Padua^ not less cele- 

20 



306 VENICE. 

brated for her beauty than her talent. Henry III., 
who had probably seen Scala's troop on his way 
through Venice in 15 74, sent for them to Paris, 
where they stayed, I believe, till the end of Henry 
IV. 's reign. After reigning supreme on the stage 
of Venice till 1637, the comedy delV arte gave up 
half its sovereignty in that year to the lyrical drama 
for which the Venetians conceived that passion 
which they retain to this day ; this form of comedy, 
however, disappeared only from the Italian stage for 
good a century later, after the success of the written 
comedies of Goldoni. It was at that time upheld by 
the three last artists of talent in this department, 
Antonio Sacco, Agostino Fiorilli and Vitalba : the 
struggle was kept up with considerable vigor. This 
comedy delV arte has left enduring memories. It 
was played from a programme, drawn out with care, 
on which the substance of each act, of which there 
were always three, was indicated ; the rest was im- 
provised. Flaminio Scala published a book which 
contained fifty of these skeleton dramas without 
granting us any information as to the detail of the 
accessories and mechanism which were used in the 
representation : the principal parts were sustained 
by masked characters, and these, according to the 
taste of the time, were always the same : the inevit- 
able Pantaloon, father to Isabella ; the lover Lean- 
der ; Harlequin the dull and greedy servant ; Gra- 
tino the doctor or pedant ; and Spavcntc the 



THE LITEEARY MOVEMENT. 307 

captain. A marriage almost always ended the 
comedy, which was generally founded upon a series 
of quips such as have again become the fashion in 
second-rate theatres of our own day. This kind of 
amusement was quite in keeping with the Italian 
comic spirit and the highly-spiced language of the 
time. It is easy to imagine what advantages this 
elastic framework would give to clever and popular 
actors trying to outdo each other in wit and spirit 
before a sympathetic audience. It might have been 
either full of spontaneous charm or else absolutely 
detestable license according to the character of that 
same audience^ which constrained the actor to put 
himself at its own level. Often^ even in the best 
scenarios, the stick, da bastonare, played an impor- 
tant part, and the comedy delV arte became a comedy 
of tricks rather too like those of an old-fashioned 
fair ; it has been both praised and blamed more than 
it deserved. 

The first traces of lyric drama at Venice are 
found in a kind of cantata for five persons, repre- 
sented during the fetes given to Henry III. of 
France on his passage through Venice in 1574. 
The author of both works and music, Cornelio 
Frangipani, called his work a tragedy ; the choruses 
were sung with an orchestral accompaniment, and 
trumpets announced the descent of the gods. A 
piece of the same kind was given on the Feast of 
the Ascension in the year 1581^ and we have in our 



308 VENICE. 

hands more than twenty compositions of the same 
kindj but more fully carried out^ belonging to the 
reign of the Doge Marino Griraani from 1595 to 
1604. These representations were given in the 
great Council Chamber, on the principal feast-days 
in the year, such as Christmas, Ascension Day, etc. 
They were naturally attended by the nobility only, 
and the public were admitted to them for the first 
time in the theatre of San Cassiano during the win- 
ter of 1637 : the Venetians, who delight in this 
kind of spectacle, have carefully preserved the date 
and special circumstances of this event. The title 
of the first opera sung at Venice was Andromeda^ 
the words were by Benedetto Ferrari, and the music 
by Francesco Manelli ; it was put on the stage with 
all the splendor suitable to this kind of spectacle ; 
the success was enormous, — and so the style was 
founded. 

Benedetto Ferrari, librettist and manager, was a 
celebrated player of the theorbo, an enthusiastic 
musician, and had got together the best singers in 
Italy for this enterprise ; their names are preserved. 
The following year the Maga Ftdminata was put on 
the stage by the same authors and with equal suc- 
cess, and new rooms were soon built more suitable 
than the first to the splendor of the appurtenances 
and sumptuous scenery, which at that time played a 
very important part. The theatre of San Giovanni 
e Paolo, belonging to the Grimani family, opened in 



THE LITERARY MOVEMENT. 309 

1639, and gave successively in the same year three 
new operas by Claudio Monteverde^ Sacrati, and 
Francesco Cavalli^ all famous composers ; in 1640, 
at the same time as the other two^ two works were 
given at San Moise also by Cavalli and the elder 
Monteverde ; and finally the Finta Faz^a of Sacrati 
made its appearance at the Novissimo theatre. The 
success of this new kind of performances made a 
great noise in Europe. Cardinal Mazarin summoned 
to Paris the celebrated Venetian stage manager 
Torelli to put the Finta Pa^^a on the stage, and that 
opera was sung in 1645 before Anne of Austria in 
the Petit-Bourbon playhouse. It was printed in 
folio in Paris that same year, and we can still im- 
agine ourselves present at the representation by 
looking at the large engravings by Nicolas Cochin 
which illustrate the volume. Who could believe that 
the echo of these first lyric dramas represented in 
Venice would come down to our day, and that the 
Maga Fulminata would supply MM. de Saint- 
Georges and Halevy with the subject of their 
comic opera, la Magicienne f 

Less than fifty years later, when the Canon Ivan- 
ovich wrote his notice of the Venetian stage, there 
were already twelve houses devoted to comedies in 
prose and verse, and to the lyric drama : the operas 
sung in Venice during the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries are to be counted by thousands. The gov- 
ernment of the Republic favored these new enter- 



310 VENICE. 

prises in every possible way, seeing in them a 
means of turning the public mind away from poli- 
tics, and of attracting strangers to the Carnival, 
which even then had long been celebrated through- 
out the whole world. 

Nevertheless the whole dramatic movement, the 
comedy deW arte as well as the lyric drama, threat- 
ened to become barren from a literary point of view, 
when Carlo Goldoni appeared : the glory of giving 
to Italy her first comic poet w^as reserved to Venice 
in her last days. The faithful study of character 
and manners, the tender tone and sympathetic 
warmth and spontaneity of his writings, prove 
Goldoni to have been a man of distinctive genius. 
His fight against the comedy clelV arte, w^hich he 
chased from the Italian stage, did not fail to bring 
troubles upon his head. The democratic fibre which 
vibrated through all his works stirred up against 
him an aristocratic plot led by the Count Carlo 
Gozzi, and in 1761 the poor great man, who had 
described so many charming and delightful scenes 
of Venetian life, delivered over without pity to the 
gibes of his rivals, mocked on the public stage, per- 
secuted in his own country — made the martyr, as we 
may say, of his genius — took refuge, like so many 
other illustrious Italians, in France, where he died 
in 1793. He wrote a good comedy for the Theatre 
FranQais — le Bourru bienfaisant, which has remained 
in the repertory. 



THE LITERARY MOVEMENT. 311 

But the genius of Venetian literature did not lie 
in the direction of works of the imagination ; we 
have said that it had an essentially utilitarian side, 
and it is from this side that it is really great and 
original. 

The government of a republic^ even an aristo- 
cratic republic, is always a government of discus- 
sion in which the art of utterance and persuasion 
holds an important place. It is all very well to 
inveigh against advocates, the ox will always be led 
by the horns, and man by words. The art of oratory 
seems to have been a favorite study, nay^ a passion 
among the Venetians. It seems that every Venetian 
man or woman was expected to be able to make a 
speech ; witness the speech the Senate caused to be 
addressed to the Emperor Frederick III. on his visit 
to Venice in 1463 by a young girl, Cassandra Fedele ; 
it is true that she was famous for being the most 
learned woman in Italy. In the conduct of affairs 
the Venetians did better still ; we have spoken at 
length of the rela^ioni or oral reports which every 
ambassador had to give on returning from his mis- 
sion, at a public sitting of the Senate ; these speeches 
are still famous, and many of them are models of 
diplomatic sagacity. Eloquence grappling with facts 
was of much greater influence still in the State coun- 
cils. Some speeches delivered under circumstances 
of great political gravity have come down to us ; 
they have nothing to envy in the great Greek and 



312 VENICE. 

Roman orations^ and the Venetian dialect in which 
they were spoken does no injury to the grandeur of 
thought^ the force of expression, the cogent ardor of 
the argument. 

Finally, to complete this brief glance which we 
have cast over Venetian literature, we will close 
with a trait which characterizes well the love and 
respect in which letters were held by the Republic ; 
she regarded as her greatest treasure the celebrated 
collection of manuscripts which had been bequeathed 
to her successively by Petrarch and Cardinal Bes- 
sarion, and erected for their reception a sumptuous 
building, the Libreria Vecchia, which still remains 
one of the most perfect examples of the architecture 
of the sixteenth century. The office of librarian to 
^^a Marciana,'' sought after by the greatest nobles, 
was a stepping-stone to the highest offices of the 
State, and three among those who had held it at- 
tained to the Ducal throne : Silvestro Valiero in 
1694, Marco Foscarini in 1762, and Alvisio Mo- 
cenigo in 1763. It is only a republican State that 
can give the world such examples of greatness at- 
tained through literature. 

PRINTING AT VENICE. 
It was in 1450 that printing first made its appear- 
ance in Europe. The new art came to satisfy so 
pressing a need in the minds of men, that even if 
Gutenberg had not then invented movable types, the 



FEINTING. 313 

discovery would have been deferred but for a very 
short timOj so powerful is the influence of necessity 
upon the genius of man. Not a moment was lost in 
curious admiration of this wonderful machine ; it 
was immediately and eagerly seized upon and set 
to work. Great discoveries always come thus, as 
though by Providence^ when the time is ripe for 
them ; though the glory of the invention is none the 
less. 

Printing was introduced into Venice in 1469. 
Two men dispute this honor : John of Spires^ and 
a Frenchman, Nicolas Jenson. It has become 
known by a singular accident, for details of this 
kind are not generally found in history, that King 
Louis XI., struck at sight of the first printed books 
by the importance of the new art, sent to Mayence 
the artist Nicolas Jenson, a skilled coin-engraver of 
Tours, to inform himself of the processes of print- 
ing. Why did Jenson not return to Paris ? and in 
consequence of what events did Venice alone profit 
by the mission confided to him by the King of 
France ? — that will probably never be known. 

John of Spires published his first book in 1469, 
the Epistolce ad Familiares of Cicero, in a folio of 
126 leaves printed in Roman characters ; and he 
established his priority in a Latin epigram placed at 
the end of the volume under that date. The oldest 
example of a book bearing the name of Jenson and 
a certain date, comes only in the year following this, 



314 VENICE. 

but there is an Italian quarto of his known by the 
name of ^' Decor Puellarum/' of which we give here 
the true title : Questa sie una opera laqiiale si chiama 
decor piieUarum : ^oe lionore de le don^elle : la quale 
da regole forma e modo al stato de le lioneste donzelle. 
This book bears the date of 1461. A mistaken but 
natural patriotism fastened on this '' Decor Puel- 
larum '' in order to assign to Venice and to Jenson a 
priority which cannot be seriously maintained now. 
The number of books which^ as we shall show pres- 
ently^ issued from his press in 1470 (the year in 
which he really began to print) makes it impossible 
to conceive that in these days of the early printing- 
fever he could have waited for nine years after 
printing his first book. Extraordinary as it may 
seem that there should be an error in a date con- 
spicuously placed at the end of a book^ this is not 
the only one that might be mentioned ; mistakes of 
the same kind have been proved in books printed in 
the fifteenth century at Bologne^ Milan, and Naples, 
and among Jensen's own books there exist two 
others in the same case, one bearing the date 1400 
instead of 1480^ and the other that of 1580 instead 
of 1480 ; nor is the circumstance so surprising after 
all when one considers the immense activity of the 
time. What may be said in favor of Jenson is that 
John of Spires, arriving in Venice with his brother 
Vindelin as assistant, both having been trained in 
the workshops of Jean Fust and Schoeff*er, could set 



FEINTING. 315 

to work at once^ while he, Jenson, had all his plant 
to collect and trials to make, so that though he was 
the first to reach Venice with the purpose of estab- 
lishing a press he was nevertheless second in the 
date of his productions. But he amply made up for 
this delay of a few months by giving the books 
which came from his press an incomparable beauty, 
which places them without dispute at the head of all 
the typographical productions of the fifteenth cen- 
tury. 

After publishing a second work, the Natural His- 
tories of Pliny, one of the most beautiful and impor- 
tant efibrts of the infant art, John of Spires died 
in same year, 1469. His brother Vindelin succeeded 
him in the direction of his house, living as a printer 
in Venice till 1477. The career of Nicolas Jenson as 
a printer lasted till the year 1488, after which no 
books are known bearing his name. These celebrated 
artists were not destined to remain long without dis- 
ciples ; even in the first year of Jenson's work, Chris- 
topher Valdarfer of Ratisbon published at Venice the 
De Oratore of Cicero, and in the following year, 1471, 
his famous Decameron of Boccaccio. This book, 
which has become a legend among book collectors, 
was sold for 56,500 francs at the sale of the Duke 
of Roxburghe's library in London, 1812 ; a noble 
extravagance which has not been repeated since. 

At this time people came from all parts of Italy 
and France, and especially from Germany, to estab- 



316 VENICE. 

lish printing houses at Venice. In 1471, we see 
John of Cologne, Adam Eost, and Clementi of 
Padua first appearing there ; in 1472 Eenner of 
Halbrunn and Gabriele di Piero of Treviso ; after 
that it is impossible to count the number of new 
arrivals, or rather we give up the task of counting 
them. It has been ascertained that from that year 
1472 to 1500 one hundred and fifty-five printers 
established themselves at Venice, all well known 
through the books that left their presses ; a list of 
these would naturally contain the most celebrated 
names. This typographical contingent of Venice in 
the fifteenth century was increased still more by the 
production of the neighboring towns belonging to 
her territory, Treviso, Padua, Vicenza, and Verona, 
where, from the year 1471, Gerard de Lisa, Valde- 
zoccio, Levilapide and Federico brought out a mass 
of important Avorks ; so hard was it to quench the 
thirst for books which had long tried to satisfy itself 
with the slow processes of caligraphy. We shall pur- 
sue these details no further, preferring to dwell for a 
moment on the elegant form and ornamentation of 
these books, characteristics nowhere carried further 
than in Venice. 

It is generally believed that the discovery of 
printing struck a fatal blow at the art of manuscript 
writing. By no means : the common copyists dis- 
appeared ; but the zeal of good caligraphers, en- 
couraged by illustrious patrons, only found in the 



FEINTING. 317 

new art an occasion for producing more perfect 
works. It was in fact repugnant to princes who 
had seen the birth of printing, to fill their libraries 
with books which might be found in the hands of 
everyone ; they did not wish to give up having them 
written carefully on fine and silky skins of vellum 
of a pleasant tone to the eye, and decorated with 
brilliant miniatures : such are the manuscripts ex- 
ecuted at the end of the fifteenth century for the 
Sforzas of Milan, the Dukes of Ferrara and Urbino, 
king Mathias Corvinus, and some of the Popes down 
to Leo X. inclusive, to speak only of the most 
famous. The manuscript writers had to succumb 
at last, they were one against a thousand, but the 
fragments, now scattered through our museums, of 
the collections just mentioned, prove that it was not 
without glory they surrendered, and. that the stand 
they made was brilliant. 

In order to conquer these preferences for manu- 
scripts, the first printers were in the habit of print- 
ing off a few copies of their productions on vellum, 
which they caused to be adorned with initial letters 
and frontispieces painted in gold and colors by skilful 
miniature painters. Among books of this kind, so 
prized in our day, those of Nicolas Jenson are the 
most remarkable. At last they summoned the 
engravers to their aid, and from the year 1480 there 
began at Venice the publication of a very remark- 
able series of books embellished with initial letters, 



318 VENICE. 

frontispieces^ and designs engraved on wood and 
printed in the text. Among the finest productions 
in the same manner we may point out : a Bible by 
Ottaviano Scotti, in 1489 ; a book on medicine. 
Fasciculus Medic'malis^ published by the brothers De 
Gregoriis in 1493 ; the first edition of an Italian 
translation of the Metamorphoses of Ovid, printed 
in 1497 by Giovanni Rosso, for Antonio Junto ; a 
set of designs for the fables of ^sop often reprinted ; 
lastly a Terence in folio, printed in 1499, and the 
Dream of PoUphlloSj printed in ^ciibus Alcli Manu- 
tii in the same year. This last book has remained 
the most popular of all, and deserves its reputation 
from the beauty and number of illustrations it con- 
tains ; but it must be read from beginning to end to 
judge of the subtlety with which the artist follows 
his author step, by step in every page, interpreting 
his thought and giving form to his minutest descrip- 
tions. The real title of the book is '' Hypneroto- 
machia,^^ that is to say, A Dream of Love in Sleep ; 
unfortunately it is written in a pedantic style, larded 
with Latin and fanciful phrases taken from the 
Greek, which makes it fatiguing to read. In the 
fifteenth century there was a taste also for embellish- 
ing editions of mathematical books, such as Euclid, 
the Almagest of Ptolemy, and others. The supposed 
artist of these typographical designs just mentioned 
is very imperfectly known (those in the Dream of 
Poliphiliis have been attributed to Giovanni Bellini 



Bronze Gates of the Campanile 



FEINTING. 319 

and to Andrea Mantegna^ but this is very doubtful). 
They represent what may be called the ancient 
style : a style which is maintained in the numer- 
ous publications of liturgies made by Lucantonio 
Junto, which becomes suppler afterward in the il- 
lustrated works published by the celebrated editor 
Francesco Marcolini. This friend of Titian liked 
best to employ the pencil of the clever artist, Giu- 
seppe Porta del Salviate. Titian himself has en- 
riched Venetian printing with portraits of Ludovico 
Ariosto and Pietro Aretino, and there is known a 
book printed at Venice in woodcuts by Marcantonio 
after designs of Raphael^ but it is very rare. Still 
later, with the brothers Griolito in the second half of 
the sixteenth century, the prints found in Venetian 
books assume a special character ; the lines of shade 
are drawn closer, and there are no cross-hatchings ; 
this is accounted for by a change of method ; the 
new cuts are done in relief on copper. This method 
of relief-engraving on copper has some advantages 
over the ordinary method of relief-cutting on wood 
blocks. 

Venice remained for more than two centuries the 
great centre of printing ; her book trade was im- 
mense. Besides literary works proper, she supplied 
Italy with elementary books of grammar, arithmetic, 
and writing for children ; she gave women books on 
ricami and point coupe — now so rare but then so 
abundant — which spread abroad exquisite designs 



320 VENICE. 

for embroidery and lace ; to religious orders she 
gave great missals, breviaries^ and books of hours ; 
to all romances of chivalry, popular poems in which 
were told the Avars of Italy in the time of Braccio 
Fortebraccio, of Sforza and Nicolo Piccinino, as well 
as the French and Spanish expeditions, and a thou- 
sand accounts of festivals and extraordinary events. 
All those little books which are now worth their 
weight in gold came from the humblest shops of la 
Frezzariaj where hard-working artisans, as Zoan 
x^ndrea, Matteo Pagan, Zoppino, Tagiiente, Paga- 
nino, etc., themselves designed and engraved the 
books they printed. 

We are no doubt passing over some, and those 
among the best, in this rapid enumeration ; but there 
is another very important branch of printed publica- 
tions in the sixteenth century that we cannot pass 
by in silence, and of which Venice had in a certain 
sense the monopoly ; we mean publications of 
printed music. 

When Ottaviano Petrucci da Fossombrone had 
entirely perfected his admirable process of printing 
music by means of two simultaneous printings, it 
was to Venice he brought it, to present it to a imblic 
among whom music had already been cultivated in 
a very high degree. The twenty years' privilege 
granted him by the Republic dates from 1498. His 
first published score, Odhecaton^ appeared in the 
first months of the year 1501. It is a collection in 



PRINTING. 321 

three parts^ composed of motetts and French part- 
songs for four and five voices ; this is not the place 
to speak of others which followed it. Ottaviano 
Petrucci may be placed side by side with Nicolas 
Jenson ; he brought the art of printing music to the 
highest degree of perfection at the first trial ; when 
we speak of his method being that of two simultane- 
ous printings^ we repeat what is the received opinion : 
but on a scrupulous examination of his books, one 
remains in absolute uncertainty by what means, con- 
sidering the infinite complications he had to over- 
come, he could have secured such precision in the 
whole that no error can be found in any part, and 
that the result escapes the possibility of analysis by 
its very perfection. 

Petruccio's books have become extremely rare, 
and count among the most precious treasures of our 
public libraries. He quitted Venice in 1512, and 
left off publishing in 1525, It is probable that he 
worked alone : among the printers who followed the 
same system, there were certainly none who equalled 
him. 

People are generally agreed to look upon the 
printing of music by means of a single printing, 
that is to say, from a surface composed of movable 
types, where each note is accompanied by fragments 
of lines which form the stave, as a French invention. 
It was Antoine Gardane, a French compositor, who 
introduced this method into Venice about 1537. 

21 



322 VENICE. 

The volumes of music published by Gardane and 
his two sons during nearly a century are so very 
numerous that one would be tempted to think that 
the whole of the Italian music of the sixteenth 
century came from their press. Their books are 
generally small oblong quartos, but among them 
are also some large folios printed very handsomely 
and elegantly. 

We have in our hands a few statistics which give 
a fair idea of the astonishing activity of the presses 
of Venice compared with those of all the rest of 
Italy together. 

The Dante bibliography of Colomb de Battines 
counts during the whole of the sixteenth century 
forty- three editions of the altissimo poeta ; of this 
number thirty-two were published at Venice, six at 
Lyons, and five in the rest of Italy. 

The contingent furnished by Petrarch is not less. 
Professor Marsand possessed a hundred and thirty 
editions of the Can^oniere printed during the six- 
teenth century, of which he has published a cata- 
logue ; a hundred and ten came from the Venetian 
press, eleven had been printed at Florence, and nine 
at Lyons. The proportion as regards the Orlando 
Ftirioso is much larger still ; from 1524 to 1668, 
where our list ends, there were published two hun- 
dred and thirteen editions of this poem, which, as 
we know, is tolerably voluminous. Venetian typog- 
raphy claims for itself alone a hundred and ninety- 



PRINTING. 323 

one ; the rest of Italy thirteen ; Lyons nine. If, 
instead of taking the great Italian poets for our 
comparison^ we had been able to take the editions 
of Virgilj Horace^ or Cicero, which came from the 
small Venetian printing-houses, the proportion 
would not have been less great ; but who could 
ever have succeeded in making a certain enumera- 
tion ? Should not such fertility be ascribed to the 
tolerance and liberty enjoyed under that form of 
government which even now is still the horror of 
many minds ? And this tolerance was exercised in 
one of the most delicate departments of the State 
supervision — the liberty of the press. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

GLASS AND MOSAICS. 

The Venetians have acquired a world-wide fame in 
the manufacture of glass. Not that they were the 
first to conceive the idea of giving graceful and re- 
fined forms to this frailest of materials^ of ornament- 
ing it with many colored enamels, of intertwining it 
with gold and fantastically shaping it ; but they 
gained their renown in the art by the beauty of their 
products and the incredible fertility of resource with 
which they varied the uses of the material. 

M. Vincenz.0 Lazzari, who has written an excel- 
lent work on the glass manufactories of Murano, 
believes he can affirm with certainty that the art of 
working in glass was brought to Venice by the first 
inhabitants who took refuge in the lagoons, inasmuch 
as the material of the antique and of the Muranese 
glass is identically the same. In the first century of 
their existence, however, this race of fishermen and 
salt- merchants manufactured only the necessaries of 
life for a primitive people ; but they had the instinct 
of barter ; and in the space of two hundred years 
they had so developed their slender resources as to 
inundate the markets of the towns of North Italy 

324 



GLASS AND MOSAICS. 325 

with their products. By degrees becoming rich, and 
forming treaties, first with the neighboring peoples, 
and soon with the barbarians who had dispossessed 
and replaced them in their ancient territory, the Ve- 
netians used their riches to found great churches, 
civilized themselves, created their city and grew to 
love luxury in their costumes and in buildings. So 
early as the beginning of the ninth century, a prince 
of Friuli brought into France, and presented to 
Louis le Debonnaire, a Venetian priest named Gre- 
gorio who was already skilled in organ building ; 
and by the tenth century articles were manufactured 
in the Venetian islands which became a source of 
commerce with Constantinople. 

It is related by Sagormino, one of the earliest 
chroniclers of the Republic, that the Doge Participa- 
zio sent a present to the Emperor Basil of twelve 
great bells founded at the Rialto ; at that period 
bells were unknown among the Greeks. A little 
later, the Emperor Otho received from Venice an 
ivory throne and footstool; finally, in 1028, under 
Pietro Orseolo, was begun the building of the Basil- 
ica of St. Mark, which was adorned all over with 
mosaics on a gold ground. It is needless to say that 
the production of the small cubes employed in mo- 
saic are a branch of glass manufacture. There is no 
doubt, therefore, that from the beginning of the 
eleventh century this industry was founded and even 
already flourishing at Venice. 



326 VENICE. 

The oldest document which mentions glass factor- 
ies and furnaces is dated 1292 ; it is a decree of the 
Grand Council^ ordering the demolition of the fur- 
naces at the Rivo Alto and their removal to the 
Island of Murano, where, even so early as 1255, a 
certain number of glass-workers had been estab- 
lished. 

From the first growth of this art, the government 
showed itself jealous to preserve it ; and to prevent 
strangers from finding out the processes connected 
with it, the exportation of unwrought or lump-glass 
from Venice, and of the materials used in the manu- 
facture, and even of broken glass which might be 
analyzed, was forbidden from the year 1275 on pain 
of confiscation. This was but the beginning ; never 
did any nation show itself so jealous to retain the 
advantages with which it was enriched by the inge- 
nuity of its citizens. Later, indeed, the French am- 
bassadors formed a kind of police to bribe the glass- 
makers and to spy out their ways of working and 
examine what raw materials were used. As a proof 
of the importance attached to this art by the Senate, 
the chiefs of the Council of Ten were charged with 
the inspection of it, and the superintendence of the 
manufactories was put under their jurisdiction. It 
is a question from whence the Venetians learnt the 
first elements of the art, to the perfecting of which 
they brought all their usual dexterity, ingenuity, and 
fine taste. The native historians are not all quite 



GLASS AND MOSAICS. 327 

impartial about this question^ and wish to prove that 
the art was spontaneous^ so to speak, in Venice ; but 
how can it be maintained that artists and mosaic- 
workers who came by order of Pietro Orseolo as 
early as the tenth century to decorate the Church of 
St. Mark, did not bring this art already fully devel- 
oped with them from the East ? The Venetians no 
doubt benefited by this knowledge, appropriated, de- 
veloped and renewed it, and soon made such progress 
in the art that even those who had first communicated 
it to them, having lost the tradition among themselves, 
habitually came to seek from the Venetians the pro- 
ducts of their manufacture. 

In examining some of the archives of the Frari, 
namely, the despatches of an ambassador of the Ee- 
public to the Sultan, I was much surprised to find, 
folded among the pages and attached to one of them, 
a large parchment on which the Grand Vizier had 
had a glass lamp drawn of the shape of those called 
'^ mosque lamps,'' bearing verses from the Koran in 
different-colored enamels. On looking into the de- 
spatch of the ambassador, which was nominally ad- 
dressed to the Doge, but was meant in reality for the 
whole Senate, I found that the ambassador had re- 
ceived a commission from the Grand Vizier to order 
four hundred of these same lamps for the decoration 
of some mosque. This fact absolutely confirms the 
statements of authors who regard the glass of 
Murano as an object of exportation to the East. 



328 VENICE. 

Let us add^ by way of showing the importance given 
to petty means of influence by the Senate, that the 
ambassador, who desired nothing better than to in- 
gratiate himself with the Grand Vizier, and who 
knew, as a practical man^ that little presents keep 
friendship alive, asked the Senate not to demand 
payment, undertaking to obtain some political com- 
pensation which should be useful and agreeable to 
the Republic. 

Whatever may have been the origin of this art, 
its products show clearly the effect of Oriental and 
especially of Arab influence. Compare the neck- 
laces found in Egyptian tombs and the little many- 
colored bottles found in Campania, at Nola, and 
in the whole Campagna of Rome, and you will 
scarcely distinguish them from the necklaces worn 
by the young girls of the lagoon ; and it is supposed 
that it was just these specimens found throughout 
Italy which served as models to the first workers 
of Murano ; this would perhaps confirm the opinion 
of M. Lazzari. 

Glass beads, which are so varied in their charac- 
ter, and which were at first simply round and blue, 
white, green, or red colored, but later were covered 
with enamels, gold, bronze or opal color, have played 
an almost incredible part in commerce. The Ori- 
entals, ever in love Avith all that is brilliant, ex- 
changed spices, silk, gold and tissues for these lus- 
trous glass beads shot with many hues, so cunningly 



GLASS AND MOSAICS. 329 

devised to entice those who had never before seen 
them and who did not know how frail they were. 
Sought after everywhere^ in Asia and on the borders 
of the Black Sea^ these beads found their way even 
to the most remote regions of central Africa^ where 
in later times travellers have found them being used 
as money. The quantities that were scattered all 
over the world are incalculable, and this simple bead 
of glass was a source of immense wealth to the Re- 
public. She knew its value well, and if she was 
proud of her goblets and vases it was of her bead 
manufactories and bead trade that she was most 
jealous. 

The first use to which glass was applied was in 
the preparation of enamel for the master-workers in 
mosaic, and from the eleventh to the fourteenth cen- 
tury this was the staple of the manufacture at Mu- 
rano. It is evident to us that the Venetians had 
originally borrowed their methods from the Greeks, 
but in making those methods their own had consid- 
erably altered them. They made plates or thin 
cakes of enamel in black, brown, or red glass, about 
six inches across and a third of an inch thick. On 
this cake they put a square of gold leaf, and to pro- 
tect the gold covered it with an extremely thin layer 
of glass, which made a glaze which both protected 
and gave lustre to the gold. The dividing of this 
cake into small cubes was left to the mosaic workers, 
who cut them by a special process according as they 



330 VENICE. 

were wanted. This, as we have said^ was the most 
frequent use found for these cakes; but sometimes, 
indeed very often^ they were used for the incrusta- 
tion of pulpitSj altarsj ambos, columns, pedestals, 
friezes, and tombs. Examples of this are very nu- 
merous all over Italy from the twelfth to the four- 
teenth century, but the most beautiful are to be 
found worked out by various architects at Ravenna, 
Rome, and at Florence. 

There are two kinds of mosaic, — that which is 
produced by a number of stones of the same or dif- 
ferent colors, forming figures or ornaments or even 
pictures, — and that composed of glass enamels of 
gold, silver, and other colors. I am not speaking of 
the first kind, which is of course very inferior to the 
second, but must say a few words about the enamels 
that form the material of those beautiful mosaics of 
which we see such fine specimens in St. Mark's. 

We shall borrow from the most competent of 
specialists. Dr. Salviati of Venice, the description 
he has given of these enamels : 

'' Colored enamels are made of a vitreous paste or 
composition. They are composed of the same sub- 
stances, silicious or otherwise, as ordinary glass ; 
but to these are added other mineral ingredients, 
which, properly prepared and mixed, give the paste 
its density, extreme hardness, and color. It is by 
these means that the desired degree of opacity, the 
purity and solidity of the enamels^ their beauty, the 



GLASS AND MOSAICS. 331 

softness and great variety of their color^ is obtained ; 
and these different qualities depend as much on the 
quantity and quality of the mineral elements which 
are combined with those of ordinary glass as on the 
degree of continuous heat to which the composition 
is subjected during its fusion. When colored 
enamels are prepared with great care and know- 
ledge, they produce absolutely the same effect as 
painting. Glass enamel is much more durable than 
any other substance used in the formation of mosaics, 
whether stone, marble, or terra-cotta, for this reason, 
that they are less porous and less subject to expan- 
sion and contraction. If on the other hand enamels 
are not prepared with all the necessary care, the re- 
sult is that by being too transparent, or by a bad 
and disproportionate mixture of the materials, they 
no longer give the effect of painting ; the color be- 
comes vague, feeble, or almost imperceptible, and in 
time it becomes evident that the work cannot stand 
against damp, smoke, or atmospheric change. 

^^ Enamels of gold and silver are the result of a 
quite different process. On a surface of thick glass 
or of enamel, according as the resulting gold enamel 
is desired to be opaque or transparent, a leaf of gold 
or silver is placed, which adheres to the glass by the 
action of fire ; this is covered again by a layer of 
the thinnest glass, either colorless or tinted at discre- 
tion. When this process is thoroughly well accom- 
plished, these three layers become so fused and 



332 VENICE. 

assimilated with one another as to form one homo- 
geneous body. The precious metal is for ever put 
beyond the reach of harm ; nothing need be feared 
for itj neither atmospheric action, nor dust, nor gas, 
nor smoke, nor insects ; it is so impossible for it to 
change after this process that it would lose nothing 
of its glitter and brilliancy if it were exposed to the 
air for centuries. A contrary effect is produced if 
the outside layer of glass is not extremely thin ; the 
metal then seems buried between two layers of glass, 
and the eye is arrested by the sheen of the glass 
rather than by that of the gold, so that the mosaic 
seems to be varnished on the surface. Another 
danger has to be guarded against during the process 
of manufacture ; if the introduction of particles of 
air between the glass and the metal is not prevented, 
the thin outside layer of glass will have a tendency 
sooner or later to separate itself from the metal. 
All these faults are found even in some of those 
ancient mosaics which were made at a time when 
the technical part of the manufacture of enamels 
was imperfectly known and the manufacture itself 
little cared for.'^ 

It will be seen by this extract that we are right 
in uniting the two arts glass and mosaic in the same 
chapter. M. Edouard Didron, the author of an in- 
teresting work entitled Du Bole decoratif de la 
Peinture en Mosaique^ gives specimens of Venetian 
mosaics of the eleventh century from St. Mark's — 



Fountain in Courtyard of Ducal Palace 



GLASS AND MOSAICS. 333 

including a St. Peter and a St. John the Evangelist. 
We are glad to find that M. Didron's conclusions 
agree with our own ; he does not wish mosaic to run 
in rivalry with painting. A more important speci- 
men in the same basilica is the decoration of the 
semi-dome of the atrium of St. Mark's, admirably 
preserved, or perhaps scientifically restored in the 
style of the period. Among the specimens of the 
mosaics is a design which ornaments the semi-dome 
of the Cathedral at Parenzo in Istria, executed by 
the Venetians in the twelfth century ; also a very 
singular composition at the left side of the Basilica 
of St. Mark, '' The Cocks of Gaul victorious over 
the wiles of the Fox of Milan '^ — a curious allusion 
of the mosaic artists of the time to the stratagem of 
a Visconti. 

After decorating the churches they went so far at 
Venice as to ornament the exterior of palaces wath 
mosaics ; it is impossible to cite the examples which 
have been preserved, but the first painters who de- 
voted themselves to the painting of contemporary 
subjects, Carpaccio and the two Bellini, in the back- 
grounds of their pictures often represent palaces and 
buildings which bear on their fagades the evidence 
of this kind of decoration. At the present day 
even, one of the greatest employers of labor of 
Venice, an artist and the restorer of mosaic, M. 
Salviati, has decorated the fagade of his house on 
the Grand Canal with large and brilliant panels in- 



334 VENICE. 

tended to catch the eye ; these will harmonize better 
than they do now with their general surroundings 
when they have been mellowed by time. 

The pavements of the churches have also been 
laid with mosaics of glass enamel ; there are some 
to be seen at St. Mark's five or six centuries old, 
which remain in all their first purity, not only as to 
color but even in their joints and setting. 

To ally itself intimately with architecture ; to 
decorate the flat surfaces which form part of a build- 
ing ; to glitter in friezes and courses of foliage- 
ornament ; to encrust itself on the columns of high 
altars ; to gladden the eye on the pavement of a 
church or palace ; to defy the attacks of weather on 
exteriors and facades ; but always to take archi- 
tectural forms, or at least forms that are monumental 
and squarely treated according to the essential nature 
of the material : these seem to us the end and ob- 
ject of mosaic. When Greek and Koman architects 
at Pompeii or Herculaneum represent a chained dog 
on the threshold of a house, with the legend '' Cave 
canem,'' they assuredly keep within strict bounds in 
giving to the animal only the architectural and con- 
ventional character of design allowed by the process 
in hand ; but later the mosaist went too far, trying 
to compete with painting, to render the brilliancy of 
color, the inspiration of the face, the indefinable 
poetry of the great masters. Do we not see at St. 
Peter's in Rome, in one of the first chapels to the 



GLASS AND MOSAICS. 335 

left on entering the church, one of the most sublime 
works of Raphael executed in mosaic and framed 
over the high altar ? Venice has not escaped this 
snare, but she took care to train a school of painter 
mosaists who so combined the tones and forms of 
their cartoons that the great salient features could be 
easily reproduced by the process of mosaic. The 
zenith of this art was reached in the sixteenth cen- 
tury, and three brothers Zuccati have made their 
names famous through it. 

It is well to observe that the ancient mosaic- 
workers, even in Venice, did not always confine 
themselves to the use of the vitrified cubes, smalti^ 
in their work. There are shades of color which 
cannot be obtained by heat, and the palette of the 
enamel-painter, rich and brilliant as it is, does not 
always permit of certain neutral tints and other 
tints of a particular intensity ; they sometimes there- 
fore used cut marbles and pebbles, as, for instance, 
in the beautiful monument of the Doge Vendramin. 

But to go back to the Murano industries of blown 
glass and colored window-glass. The denomination 
blown glass, which is especially given to Venetian 
glass, fails to give an exact idea of its nature and 
specific character, although it is true, so far, . that 
the Venetian glass is blown while that of other 
nations is run, moulded, or cut. Salviati would have 
the name of glass confined to the produce of the 
Venetian manufactures, and the foreign sorts he 



336 VENICE. 

would call crystal, or crystallified glass. What 
especially distinguishes the glass manufactures of 
Bohemia, France, England, and other countries 
is their great clearness and brilliancy, qualities 
which in our own day more than ever are carried 
to the highest point of perfection. In a word, 
these foreign makers have only one object, to 
imitate the quality of crystal. Thus, when they 
have perfected the properties of clearness and 
brilliancy, they then set about increasing the attrac- 
tiveness of their productions by cutting them after 
they have been first run in moulds, that is to say 
by employing mechanical means to obtain something 
like the richness, the variety of form and vigor of 
line which alone can ensure it success in the market. 
But to do this is to demand from glass qualities 
which it ought not to yield and to change its nature, 
depriving it of its two essential qualities, lightness 
and ductility. The glory of Murano is to have 
preserved the special properties of the material, 
and to have made it yield all the beauties of which 
it was capable. The glass-workers of Venice had 
two advantages on their side : first the raw material, 
which lent itself admirably to their needs and the 
nature of their work, for the ductility of their glass 
carried with it as a consequence the property of 
extreme lightness, especial brilliancy, and a vitreous 
appearance which is quite its own ; the same 
ductility also rendered it possible to introduce into 



GLASS AND MOSAICS. 337 

its colorless portions whatever shades and varieties 
of color had been invented by science and experi- 
encCj and thus to impress upon the object, while 
keeping it in a state of partial fusion, the most 
capricious forms which the taste, talent, ingenuity 
or caprice of the artist dictated to him. To these 
fundamental conditions must be added the natural 
good taste of the Venetians of MuranO; and the 
advantages of an historical tradition. 

Much patience, skill, care, and quickness are 
needed in the hand as well as the mind of the work- 
man, to avert the thousand accidents which may 
occur in the fabrication. Consider that all the 
manipulations of the glass are accomplished by the 
action of fire, to which every piece is submitted 
several times (up to fifty and sixty times even) 
before it is quite completed, and that the same 
furnace which has just enabled the workman to 
give life to his material, may the next moment de- 
stroy it by softening the glass again and so changing 
its form. Imagine this man, obliged to give up the 
outline he had first intended, and to bring to per- 
fection a quite difi'erent one suggested by the neces- 
sities of the moment ; and we shall then recognize 
the talent that is necessary to triumph over such 
obstacles. In other industries, such for instance as 
china and faience, the workman or artist, having to 
deal with cold and passive materials, can take his 
own time and work on with loving care till he is 

22 



338 VENICE. 

completely satisfied. Here, on the contrary all is 
sudden, rapid, and spontaneous, and that is the great 
difficulty of this beautiful art. 

It was by wisely employing its own resources 
that Murano succeeded in winning so great a repu- 
tation. Its glass, drawing double life from the 
breath of genius as well as the breath of the lungs, 
is quite simply worked by means of a tube or stick 
of iron, a few pairs of pincers or scissors, and some 
other quite common tools. But in the skilful hand 
of the workman it takes all imaginable forms, all 
possible shades, charming the eye at once by grace 
of outline and beauty of color. Hence the fame 
of those delightful varieties with which all amateurs 
are acquainted, that is to say, the filigranaj the 
ritortiy the latticiniOj the fiamma, the milli/iori, the 
calcedonia^ the ghiaccia, with the several processes 
which have been discovered for their production ; 
hence also the fame, either for originality of inven- 
tion or for delicacy and perfection of tone, of those 
colors of Venetian glass known under the names of 
girasole (opal), lattimo, rubino, alabastro^ giallo d^orOy 
acqua marinaj etc. 

Murano was the centre of this beautiful art of 
glass manufacture. Let us cast a general glance 
over the growth of the industry to which the island 
thus owes glory and wealth. Whatever individual 
opinions may be held respecting its origin, is it in- 
disputable that the enamels used in the most ancient 



GLASS AND MOSAICS. 339 

mosaics which adorn or did adorn the churches and 
basilicas of Torcello and the islands, were made at 
Venice. These are the undoubted monuments which 
prove that the Muranese industry went back at least 
as far as the eleventh century ; the name is even 
known of the master who executed the mosaics of 
St. Mark ; he was a certain Pietro summoned by the 
Doge Vitale Michele I. in 1100. 

In the thirteenth century the art takes a further 
development ; in 1268 the glass-workers are already 
formed into a corporation, and at the election of 
Lorenzo Tiepolo as Doge, in that solemn procession 
of all the arts where each corporation carried its 
masterpieces, those of Murano appeared in the 
ceremony with the specimens of their frail and 
exquisite industry. The furnaces at that time were 
on the Rialto ; a police measure decreed by the 
Grand Council orders that they shall be destroyed 
for fear of fire, and reconstructed in the neighbor- 
hood of Venice (8th November 1291). Some glass- 
workers had already established themselves at Mu- 
rano ; and those who were now ejected from Venice 
joined them, and glass manufacture soon became 
the specialty of the island. 

We can draw from the archives very accurate 
information on the growth of the industry. In 1329, 
Master Giovanni, a worker in verixelli^ in the Calle 
dei Apostoli at Venice, asks permission of the Great 
Council to furnish glass for the church of St. Francis 



340 VENICE. 

in Florence. In 1355, Master Mario, a painter on 
glass, decorates one of the chapels in the Frari. In 
1370 were made the glass stamps or dies intended 
for printing in manuscripts the initial capital letters 
afterward to be illuminated. In 1376 the Senate 
declares that a noble may marry the daughter of a 
master glass-manufacturer^ and that his posterity 
shall be held noble. 

This was the time at which Venetians spread far 
and wide over Italy to decorate the great buildings ; 
Tommasino d'Axandrii and Nicolo undertook the 
glass windows in the Cathedral of Milan. The 
corporations of glass- workers already formed divided 
themselves into special classes : the verixelUj who 
made the small glass objects such as beads, the 
phiolerij who made the bottles. The celebrated 
Angelo Beroviero belonged to the second of these 
societies ; he was the head of a school and, so to 
speak, of a dynasty ; in the first half of the fifteenth 
century he had the most famous furnace of Murano 
at the sign of the Angel ; he made both vessels and 
windows. A disciple of the learned chemist Don 
Paolo Godi de Pergola, he knew the secret of giv- 
ing the most varied colors to the glass, and he wrote 
down all his methods in memoirs which he left to his 
successors. M. Vicenzo Lazari tells a storv on this 
subject which recalls that of Giovanni Bellini and 
Antonio da Messina. A certain Giorgio, who was 
called ^41 Ballerino," probably in irony, for he was 



GLASS AND MOSAICS. 341 

crooked^ Immp-backed and deformed all over^ got 
into the house of the Beroviero, as a servant^ con- 
trived to possess himself of the manuscript, copied 
it^ andj thenceforth master of Beroviero's secrets, 
won the hand of his daughter Marietta. With her 
hand he obtained a fortune^ built a furnace^ and 
founded in his turn the rival dynasty of the 
Ballerini. 

Venice, however, was jealous, and soon reclaimed 
Beroviero ; and that artist was destined by and by 
to discover the process by which he applied enamel 
to glassj producing those beautiful goblets^ light as 
a leaf, on which he painted friezes of different 
colors, scrolls, portraits, and allegorical scenes. The 
drinking-glass, leaving its mere practical uses, be- 
came an object of pure fancy and ornament. For 
a feast^ a marriage, the birth of a child, a symbolic 
glass would be presented, and as the art developed, 
objects in ^^ crystalline glass '^ took every shape, 
from the short-stemmed and wide-mouthed cup, to 
the long, thin, tapering flute shape scarcely leaving 
room for the lips, and adorned with quaint wings or 
handles in the form of chimeras and dragons of a 
different color from the body of the vase. The 
fancy of the glass-workers went so far as to repre- 
sent objects of all shapes and uses, pistols, sticks, 
violins, etc., etc., and glass was, so to speak, sculp- 
tured. Soon it was used in almost everything, — in 
the incrustation of vaultings, in the pavements of 



342 VENICE. 

chateaux and chapels ; and on the dressing-tables 
of the noblesj in their palaces and villas, specimens 
of ^^ Beroviero '' may be found from the end of the 
fifteenth century serving as decorations side by side 
with pieces of goldsmith's work^ with ivories and 
precious stones. 

From the first, Beroviero reached the highest 
point of perfection in his art ; glass may be made 
lighter than his, the crystal may be clearer, but it 
was not this clearness of the glass in imitation of 
crystal that he sought ; the form is exquisite, and in 
enamel his brothers and sons who succeeded him 
were never surpassed. They furnished enamelled 
glass even to the Arabs themselves who had in- 
vented it (for Damascus had been the capital of 
Arabian arts, and was evidently the birthplace of 
this art in particular). Pushing still further the 
limits of the uses to which glass was applied, Ven- 
ice produced those famous mirrors which are so 
celebrated and which became an object of jealousy 
to Louis XIV., of Avhom it is but just to say that 
he had an ever-wakeful desire to introduce all great 
foreign industries into France. 

It is not too much to say that the whole world 
became tributary to this industry, and foreigners 
imitated it with more or less success. Venetian 
workmen were bribed, and ambassadors were in the 
plot; the Sun-King himself, one day went in state 
to visit; in their workshops in the faubourgs, the 



GLASS AND MOSAICS. 343 

Venetian workmen who had been sent to him and 
who imported into France the processes of Murano. 

Angelo Beroviero left a son Marino, as skilful as 
himself; we may without fear of mistake attribute 
to him the splendid glass in San Giovanni e Paolo, 
made from the cartoons of the Venetian painter and 
engraver, Girolamo Mocetto (1473). It is to this 
family that we owe all the progress effected in this 
delightful art. In 1463 they had invented a trans- 
parent glass which was called ^^ crystal '' to distin- 
guish it from the colored and green-tinted glasses 
which had been made up to that time. They give 
up the simple outlines bequeathed to them by an- 
tiquity, and become bold, audacious, fantastic ; they 
use gold and enamel in decoration, and hand down 
to us those admirable cups that are now so precious, 
betrothal glasses, marriage gifts, memorial vases, or 
show-pieces of the guild, which, laden with inscrip- 
tions, with foliage, with charming borders and varied 
colors, in some cases still present to us historical 
portraits or scenes from the life of the fifteenth 
century. 

Beads, which played an important part in business 
and became a source of wealth to Venice, and an 
element of commerce with the most distant countries, 
become richer and more varied ; they constitute a 
special branch of the industry carried on by a sep- 
arate corporation (the '' Paternostri a rossette '' and 
" Oldani '' — names which are still in use). 



344 VENICE. 

The government of Venice watched with solicitude 
over the development and protection of all branches 
of industry. Murano was the object of its anxious 
care. The importation of foreign glass was forbid- 
den ; control was exercised over the worksj and the 
government reserved to itself;, by means of official 
inspectors of the glass-works, the right of stopping 
any badly executed order from going out. To facil- 
itate and protect the art, the raw materials were ex- 
empt from all taxes ; two identical industries were 
not allowed, and if foreign workmen were admitted 
they had to fix on a definite home. When the State 
gave orders, and it did so frequently, they were care- 
fully distributed over the various establishments. 

Marcantonio Coccio Sabellico has described the 
manufactories of Murano in 1495^ in his little book 
Be Venetce Urhis SitUj which is a valuable document, 
showing us the city in the full eff^ervescence of her 
activities both on the eve and also at the very hour 
of her highest development. 

From 1500 to 1550 the art of the glass-worker 
was in full perfection. From 1490 the Senate put 
this industry, in which it took a great interest, under 
the watchful care of the Council of Ten. 

We may enter into some of the special details of 
this art, which appropriated new elements every day, 
and continually developed or transformed itself. At 
the beginning of the sixteenth century Andrea Vida- 
ore discovered the way of manufacturing false pearls 



GLASS AND MOSAICS. 345 

with the enameller's blow-pipe, and this opened up 
an entirely new branch of the art for Murano ; the 
corporation of the soffialume (blowers) constitutes and 
organizes itself; this Andrea also invented glass jet^ 
another resource which became considerable. 

As early as 1507 it was finally discovered how to 
replace the polished metal plates which had till then 
served as mirrors by plates of ornamental glass with 
a metallic leaf fastened at the back. 

The Germans and Flemings had been more ad- 
vanced for nearly a century, but at Venice they had 
gone back to the metal plates, when, in 1507, two 
inhabitants of Murano, Andrea and Domenico del 
Gallo, sons of Angelo, petitioned the Council of Ten 
for a monopoly of mirror glass for twenty-five years 
over the whole territory of the Eepublic, and for 
permission to keep their fires lighted during the two 
months and a half when the fires of Murano were 
bound to be let out. This was the birth of an enor- 
mous industry, that of Venetian mirrors, an industry 
of the greatest importance even till recent times and 
one which the most advanced nations have tried to 
appropriate. 

In 1605, Girolamo Magagnati discovered the 
method of coloring '^ crystal '' glass without altering 
its transparency ; and also of cutting it in facets, to 
imitate precious stones. Panes of clear glass were 
substituted for the ancient panes, which were no 
doubt very picturesque, but which left the interiors 



346 VENICE. 

in darkness. In 1680^ Liberale Motta made mirrors 
of the largest size known up to that time, and gave 
the greatest stimulus to this industry. In 1686, the 
Morellij a Muranese house, attained to such wealth 
that thej purchased nobility for themselves and all 
their descendants. 

France, thanks to the initiative of Colbert, Eng- 
land, thanks to the Duke of Buckingham, and soon 
after Bohemia itself, compete with Murano ; and 
this splendid Venetian industry generally decreased 
toward the eighteenth century. A Muranese, Giu- 
seppe Briati, a passionate lover of his art, engaged 
himself in one of the manufactories of Prague, and 
as soon as he had made himself master of the secrets 
of the manufacture which had brought such renown 
to the products of that country, returned to Murano. 
On the 23rd of January, 1736, he obtained a license 
for ten years to manufacture and sell crystals made 
after the Bohemian fashion at Murano, an attempt 
which had been strictly forbidden up to that time. 
To this Briati is due the revival, if not of Murano — 
for he had established his furnace at Venice, in the 
Via del Angelo Eaffaello, and by authority dated the 
4th of March, 1739, had destroyed those that he pos- 
sessed in the island — at least of the art itself. This 
was the period of mirrors framed in black frames in 
vernis Martin^ in cut-glass with flowers and foliage 
in relief. It was the moment when lustres were dec- 
orated with grapes, leaves, and flowers of the bright- 



GLASS AND MOSAICS. 347 

est colors. Filigranaj too, was in high honor^ and 
Briati executed in it vases which in taste and refine- 
ment of form take their place beside the most pre- 
cious ornaments. Briati died on the 17th of January, 
1772. 

At Murano, however, the art survived, and among 
the masters of it are cited the Miotti, who invented 
the aventurine^ so peculiar to Venice and of such a 
delicate shade of color. In 1790, Giorgio Barbaria 
asks for a patent for the manufacture of black bottles 
for export to England, and soon afterward fabricates 
enamels and jet. Barbaria is the last great name of 
Murano ; he was deputy of the island from 1794 to 
1796 ; this brings us to the eve of the fall of the 
Republic. 

Murano, the centre of such wealth, activity, 
and power, becomes a desert ; the journeymen and 
masters carry into foreign lands an industry upon 
which they can no longer live. From two hundred 
and fifty to three hundred glass-works might have 
been counted at Murano toward the seventeenth cen- 
tury ; now there are fourteen or fifteen. It is still, 
however, a prosperous enough branch of the art, but 
supported chiefly by foreigners, who wish to carry 
away examples from the famous glass-works which 
were once among the glories of Venice. It is but 
fair to say that Salviati, to the glory and profit of the 
city, has restored its fame to the art and has made 
the other countries of Europe his dependents for this 



348 VENICE. 

produce. The applications of the art used to be 
generally for practical and useful things ; but they 
have now assumed a much more fanciful character^ 
and there is scarcely anything utilitarian left in the 
aim now pursued by the manufacturers of the second 
class. Beadsj which had been so long a source of 
wealth, are scarcely any more worn by the natives, 
but still serve as an ornament for the women of the 
people all along the eastern coasts of the Adriatic, 
to the Sclavs of the south, and to those of the whole 
of the Balkan peninsula ; the Bulgarians, the Bos- 
nians, the Serbs of the Principality still wear them, 
and in the ancient Greek colonies the tradition has 
remained ; but it is no longer Venetian or even Ital- 
ian ships that carry these products to their destina- 
tion ; the trade is entirely in the hands of the 
English. 

In short, the art of Murano, such as it still exists 
and is practised by the glass-worker of the present 
day, was once an art full of charm, the source of 
enormous wealth, a school for foreigners, who acquired 
its essential elements, and by degrees created for 
themselves rival industries having a character of 
their own but owing their origin more or less to this 
first industry of the Venetians at Murano, — an indus- 
try itself borrowed from the Arabs, modified and 
improved, increased by fresh elements, appropriated, 
thanks to the taste and ingenuity of the inhabitants 
of the lagoon, by Venice, and there finally developed 



GLASS AND MOSAICS. 349 

up to a point wliicli no other nation had been able to 
reach. The Venetians excelled in the quality of the 
material, in the beauty of their glasses colored in the 
solid ; they had a dark blue, above all a purple vio- 
let altogether their own, a green like the emerald ; 
from the beginning they used gold and enamel freely, 
and have left specimens of goblets of the most fin- 
ished grace, which are now considered of the highest 
value. Later they, so to speak, volatilized this light 
material, blowing it into impalpable bubbles, giving it 
the most capricious, fantastic and paradoxical forms, 
covering it with filigree surfaces as iridescent as 
soap-bubbles. But this was not enough ; they in- 
vented the millefiori^ put together complicated mon- 
uments^ splendid lustres on which colored flowers 
escaped from bells of opal sheen ; and adding new 
tints to the palette of the enameller and glass-worker, 
invented the aventurine brow^n, and that deep and 
beautiful black which takes such unexpected reflec- 
tions in the light. 

The art of mosaic is also in full revival at Venice. 
Those who have visited the South Kensington 
Museum will have been struck by the idea of the 
architect of that building, who at the heiglit of the 
first story has put a frieze representing the great 
artists of all times and countries ; the designs are 
by the most distinguished members of the Royal 
Academy and have been executed in mosaic at 
Venice. M. Garnier in his new Opera House in 



350 VENICE. 

Paris has also availed himself of this resource^ and 
the vestibule which leads from the grand staircase 
to the foyer presents a ceiling entirely executed by 
the same process. There has been question lately 
of implanting the art of mosaic in France ; in Lyons 
the brothers Mora had already established manufac- 
tories, and we had thus ceased to be dependent upon 
the Italians for those pavements composed of small 
stones laid side by side over which a bath of cement 
is pouredj which are so common in Italy, and are 
there called mortadella. The opening of a workshop 
for mosaic at Sevres is also spoken of; M. Eugene 
Miintz, a pupil of the French school of archseology 
at Home, has written a history of mosaic from un- 
published documents ; M. Gerspach, chief secretary 
at the department of Fine Arts, has been charged 
to collect all information on the technics of the art. 
It is certain that at Venice, and at Venice in St. 
Mark^s, will be found the most beautiful specimens 
of an art which it is thus very reasonably desired to 
establish in France. 



CHAPTEE XVIL 

LACE— COSTUME. 

The large towns of Northern Italy can each claim 
the glory of having supplied the lace trade with 
products of the greatest value, from the first days 
of the sixteenth century to the seventeenth ; but 
Venice deserves the first place for her needle points. 
In spite of the ^^provveditori alle Pompe/' magis- 
trates specially appointed to set limits to luxury in 
dress^ liveries^ gondolas^ and the use of jewellery, 
the Venetian women of the seventeenth century are 
the first to wear Venice point. The birth of a new 
local industry dates from this century, an industry 
which cannot be passed by in silence in a work of 
this kind. But we must claim indulgence for our 
treatment of what is so special and technical a 
subject ; making it our principal point to indicate 
the difi*erent phases of the art. 

The really luxurious epoch of the Venetian Repub- 
lic was not, as might have been supposed, the six- 
teenth, but the fifteenth century ; the wealth of the 
nobles reached its climax about 1450. It is easy to 
account for this. Commerce, which had been the 
great source of wealth to the noblest and richest in 

351 



352 VENICE. 

the State, was no longer, after a certain period, per- 
mitted to nobles or to those who took part in the 
Great Council; fortunes therefore could not, as here- 
tofore, renew themselves as fast as they Avere ex- 
hausted — whether by the building of palaces and 
villas, the splendor of daily life, the formation of 
antiquarian collections, commissions to the great 
artists of the day, or such other modes of patrician 
expenditure as might be dictated by an innate love 
of art and the most cultivated taste. The patrician 
ladies displayed such an amount of luxury on great 
occasions, such as marriages, receptions of ambas- 
sadors, and visits of foreign princes, that about 1514 
certain morose old senators, anticipating the French 
senator Dupin by four centuries, demanded a hear- 
ing in full Senate in order to denounce publicly the 
ruinous fancies of these beautiful Venetian women, 
the devices, follies and extravagances ^^ worthy of 
the Lower Empire '' of those whose duty it was to 
stay quietly at home, and probably also, in the 
opinion of these protesters, to spin wool ; which a 
noble Venetian lady never allowed herself to do. 
From 1474 certain jewels and fabrics had been 
proscribed by law. What to us seems singular 
is that pearls above all, — to our eyes so quiet and 
becoming an ornament, and one which so little 
bespeaks the parvenu, but is not less a sign of good 
taste than of great wealth, — were nevertheless the 
object of the severest measures on the part of the 



LACE. 353 

Senate. It must, however, be mentioned that at 
the tournaments of the Duke of Ferrara, and at the 
entry of any ambassador, noble ladies had been seen 
to cover over their arms, throats, chests, hair, and 
even their dresses, with Oriental pearls of the 
highest value, carrying about them like so many 
living shrines or jewelled reliquaries, the value of 
several millions of gold ducats. In 1514, regula- 
tions affecting costume were promulgated, and here 
is a list of the objects which came under the disci- 
pline of the '' provveditori alle Pompe '^ amber, 
chased silver, agates, ladies' cloaks, laces, diamond 
buttons, chains, silk capes, lace sleeves, enamelled 
gold, damasks of all colors, velvets of all qual- 
ities, leathers, embroideries, fans, gondolas with 
their rugs and carpets, sedan-chairs lined with 
velvet. 

It seems that nothing was untouched, and that 
the senators were becoming so many Catos. Neither 
did they confine themselves to clothing, liveries and 
gondolas ; they regulated feasts and entertainments, 
limiting the fashion and the cost of gold and silver 
plate, the number of dishes, the bill of fare, down 
even to the sweetmeats and made dishes. For a 
long time already the same officials had regulated 
the costume and toilet of the Dogaressa, her town 
and holiday attire, what she was to wear at official 
ceremonies, in mourning, at church, and even in 
private. 

23 



354 VENICE. 

But how are these ideas of repression to be recon- 
ciled with the encouragement of commerce, and 
with the Venetian taste for splendor and grandeur ? 
How^ again, could they prevent these restrictive 
measures from impeding and throwing obstacles in 
the way of that prodigious and almost insane display 
of luxury which attends upon great national holi- 
days and official receptions ? We no longer see the 
personages, but we do see the background and set- 
ting in which they moved, the enchanted chambers 
of the Ducal Palace ; and even if we had not 
searched for speaking proofs from the chroniclers, 
those contemporary witnesses who describe for us 
these splendid festivities, w^e should have understood 
for ourselves that the actors must of necessity have 
been worthy of such a stage. The Senate had 
made provision accordingly ; on certain days it 
gave rein to those passions which it usually re- 
strained by lawj and in this way commerce lost 
nothing. One might possess a million pearls, but 
they could only be worn on those special and festal 
days. 

Here is the text of a decree made in 1574, on 
the occasion of the entrance of Henry HI. into 
Venice: ^^All contrary decrees notwithstanding, 
it shall be permitted to every lady invited to the 
said feast, to wear all dresses and jewels of what 
kind soever seems to them most favorable for the 
adornment of their persons.'' 



Interior of the Church of San Giorgio Maggfiore 



LACE. 355 

What the result of such a permission would be, 
it is not very difficult for us to imagine. The 
passion of the patrician ladies for dress, as though 
exasperated by the prohibition of the provveditori, 
knew no bounds on these festal days. The conse- 
quences were astounding ; we know their general 
character by the representations of art, and by read- 
ing the literature relating to the women of the 
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Venice ; and we 
have only to draw upon our own resources and 
borrow a few lines from our essay, La Femme a 
Venise au seizihne siecle^ to describe a noble lady 
of that day. But does not the reader see her 
already in his mind's eye, advancing in the guise in 
which she was painted by Saint-Didier (who, how- 
ever, dates from a century later) ; or in that in 
which she has been delineated by Guasco, by Cesare 
Vecellio, in the MS. Doneschi Bifetti in the library 
of St. Mark's, in the Malitie deJle Donne, by the 
engraver Goltzius in his bold manner, and by 
Giacomo Franco, who is of such service to us when 
he represents the manners of the inclita citta, her 
'^ public spectacles, her most imposing feasts, her 
naval tournaments, and other royal amusements 
which the Most Serene Republic delighted to off*er 
to the princes her visitors.'' Later we have two 
artists, in two diff*erent forms of art, who will tell 
us everything that concerns the women of Venice ; 
these are Longhi, too little reputed in France, and 



356 VENICE. 

Goldoni^ whose plays are more widely known. 
Nothing can be quainter than the representation, 
in a very rare plate in the library of the learned 
Marquis Girolamo d'Adda, in Milan, of a Venetian 
lady in the act of bleaching her hair, seated on 
the terrace of her house to promote the process of 
drying, and wearing the curious hat, without a 
crown, designed to allow of the tresses being drawn 
upward through it. ^^ See them,'' runs a contem- 
porary comment, ^' planted and taking root on their 
balconies as long as there is a ray of sunshine ! 
They comb themselves, survey the result in the 
glass, and then stay for three hours drying their 
heads.'' Here, then, without need of looking 
further, is the reason why there are only light- 
haired women in the pictures of Veronese, and why 
the goddesses, nymphs, virgins, and courtesans of 
Titian have golden and shining hair of that incom- 
parable color to which the name of the great painter 
has been given. 

But now a last detail must be given, which deals 
the final stroke at the ladies of Venice, the gentil- 
donne^ as Saint-Didier has it ; — not only did nature 
deny them golden locks, but she did not make them 
tall, opulent, stately, with the bearing and gait of 
goddesses, such as Veronese depicts them in many 
a figure of Esther or triumphant queen or Venus. 
Alas ! the truth is, that as they dyed their hair, so 
they added to their stature by wearing pattens. 



LACE. 357 

And if I am told that this curious custom of wear- 
ing pattens hidden under the dress, and transform- 
ing lowly dwarfs into splendid giantesses, — if I am 
told that this was an exception, a caprice, I can only 
mention the pattens in the Correr Museum, the 
paintings of Carpaccio, the engravings of Franco, 
and above all the following extract from La Ville et 
la JRepublique de Venise, by the Sieur Saint-Didier, 
who was almost a contemporary of the generation 
of which I speak. " The daughters of the last 
Doge Domenico Contarini were the first who freed 
themselves from that inconvenient slavery to the 
wearing of pattens. Some of these were two feet 
high, which made their wearers appear really 
colossal, and they could not put one foot before the 
other without leaning on the shoulders of two serv- 
ing-women. There is a strong likelihood that 
the policy of husbands first introduced such a 
custom, which, it is said, they greatly approved; 
for an ambassador, discoursing lately with the same 
Doge and some of his councillors while they were 
assembling in the palace to hold a chapter, chanced 
on the subject of these enormous pattens, saying 
significantly that little shoes were certainly much 
more convenient, to which one of the councillors 
answered with an austere expression, and repeated 
twice, that little shoes were only too convenient." 
There is no more curious point in connection with 
Venetian dress ; and neither Franco, the Bertelli, 



358 VENICE. 

nor Cesare Vecellio, who with the author of the well- 
known book Degli Hahiti anticM e moderni di diversi 
parti del Mundo are the great authorities on such 
things, allows himself anywhere to be equally 
explicit. 

But to return to our lace, — that it was worn be- 
fore the invention of Venice point is certain, as the 
fine Venetian portraits of the early part of the six- 
teenth century show us the throat, wrists and bodies 
of women's dresses ornamented with it, and even 
men's clothing also ; but the particular variety 
known by this name dates, according to the author 
of VHistoire de la Dentelle^ from the seventeenth 
century. Admirable specimens of lace, point coupe, 
etc., are shown in the beautiful Venetian publications 
of the time. M. Piot possesses a fine collection of 
books on lace and embroidery of the fifteenth and 
sixteenth centuries. What may well excite our 
wonder is that we see artists of the very highest 
order devoting themselves to this class of designs. 
Titian's nephew has left a celebrated collection of 
this kind ; they were made for princesses of the 
blood, for queens and illustrious ladies, and examples 
of these curious works are nowadays worth their 
weight in gold. It is evident too, that the hands of 
powerful artists are to be recognized in some of these 
rich and noble designs in point coupe j — in one of 
them now before us, lions, eagles and the cross of 
St. James of Calatrava, conventionalized and ad- 



LACE. 359 

mirably appropriated to the object^ are skilfully 
combined with fleurs de lis ; while in another, simple 
combinations of rounds and stars stand out in white 
on a ground of pure black. 

'^ The special character of this lace consists in 
high reliefs, ornamental figures either in solid or 
open work, artistically formed and arranged in 
petals, overlaid with fantastic flowers of very broad 
design, the open blossoms of which detach them- 
selves from rich foliage of marvellous workmanship, 
and are connected by joining threads and very deli- 
cate network stitches.'' 

The technical authority whom we have quoted^ 
himself puts this kind of lace above all others for 
the sumptuous elegance of its high relief, the soft- 
ness and suppleness which make it stand out like 
sculpture, the tender and velvety quality which is 
the characteristic of needle-made laces and especially 
of Venice point. 

At first, the stitches used in making the new lace 
known by the name of Venice point were unknown 
except to the inventors, who preserved the monopoly 
of their secret for a certain number of years ; and 
as all the countries through which the love of luxury 
w^as spread desired to have specimens of this new 
kind of lace, which had suddenly become so famous 
and so much in fashion, the industry developed con- 
siderably in Italy. The real Venice point — for of 
course there soon were imitations of it — was entirely 



360 VENICE. 

needle-made ; the foliage, the petals of the flowers^ 
the stalksj all the raised parts, fillings, connecting 
threads, picots of all kinds, were made with the same 
stitch ; the work therefore represented a considerable 
relative value because of the time given to its pro- 
duction ; the price too was almost prohibitory ; be- 
sides which the export duty had to be paid. Other 
countries therefore, and especially France, more or 
less successfully entered into competition with Ven- 
ice, with lace of their own making. Braids and 
tapes replaced part of the needlework ; a lace was 
produced certainly not to be compared with real 
Venetian point, but of which the decorative effect at 
a distance was very much the same, and the price 
much lower. It was now no longer an art but a 
manufacture. 

Specimens of the lace are still to be found worthy 
of a place in great collections, for lace is collected 
nowadays as pictures or any other objects of art are 
collected. M. Dupont d'Auberville has brought 
together the most admirable examples of the lace of 
all countries, and has taken special care to form a 
chronologically arranged series, in which the whole 
growth of this industry can be followed from its 
infancy down to our own time. In the large manu- 
factories at Manchester, whole rooms may be seen 
arranged as galleries for the exhibition of products 
of this kind from all nations. At the South Ken- 
sington Museum several opportunities have been 



LACE. 361 

given of seeing collections lent by these great Man- 
chester collectors and also by French collectors ; our 
industrial art exhibitions have also furnished us, 
though to a much smaller degree, with opportunities 
for admiring the beautiful examples of Venetian 
point which have been preserved. 

We have said that Louis XIV. directed his atten- 
tion to this Venetian industry with the object of es- 
tablishing a like industry in France ; he began by 
bribing glass-makers from Murano to settle in his 
country : he wished also to have his national lace- 
makers, and so French point was invented. He did 
not think it beneath him to write with his own hands 
to ambassadors, entering into questions of detail re- 
lating to the engagement of foreign workmen, and 
to the converse process of bringing back to their 
own country Frenchmen who had left it to carry on 
their national industries abroad. Sometimes the 
capitalists who endeavored to found such new in- 
dustries received patents of nobility for themselves 
and their descendants ; considerable sums of money 
were lent to them free of interest ; others were 
granted to them in free gift ; they had annual pen- 
sions, the privilege of buying salt at wholesale 
prices, and that of brewiilg beer for their own con- 
sumption without paying duty. M. de Colbert, that 
comprehensive genius, took care to interest himself 
in this important question ; in the negotiations with 
the Venetian ambassador relating to the privileges. 



362 VENICE. 

to be oflFered to lace-workers who were willing to 
leave their city and transfer themselves to Paris, he 
asks the French ambassador, M. de Saint-Andre, 
for an exact account of the situation of the manu- 
factories of mirror-glass at Murano, and of those for 
point de fil at the Eialto ; he wishes to know the 
tariffs, whether they are lowered, where the pro- 
ducts go, and lastly what countries import the 
greatest quantity. 

Louis XIV. did not trust even to his minister on 
this question. In the work I have mentioned, under 
the article ^^ Point de Venise et Point de France,'' I 
find the following extract from a royal letter dated 
9th of November, 1666, and addressed to M. de la 
Bourlie, Governor of Sedan : " The establishment 
of the manufacture of French point is of such great 
importance to the welfare of my people, and I am 
compelled to take such strict precautions against the 
spite of the dealers Avho had been accustomed to get 
work done at Venice and to sell in my court and 
kingdom the manufactures of that city, that I desire 
that you should not only order the establishment of 
the said manufacture in the town of Sedan and 
neighboring villages, but that you should even pre- 
vent the products of the ordinary manufactures of 
Sedan being sold to any but the contractors for the 
French point lace, so that, all dealers being excluded 
from all kinds of trade in the said town and sur- 
rounding villages; they may lose the hope of being 



LACE. 363 

able to imitate the said works^ and be compelled to 
join the said manufacture in good faith/' etc. 

The great king and his minister showed thus the 
utmost anxiety about the higher kinds of industry, 
and succeeded in establishing them in their own 
country to such an extent that on the 6th of January 
1673, M. de Colbert writes to the Count d'Avaux, the 
French ambassador to the Eepublic : ^^I have re- 
ceived the collar of raised point which you have sent 
me, and think it very beautiful. I shall compare it 
with those made in our manufactories ; but I ought 
to tell you beforehand that as fine are made in this 
kingdom. '^ 

The fact, then, is established ; but if the French 
ambassador at Venice was alert and clever, the Mag- 
nifico who represented the Senate at the court of his 
Most Christian Majesty was also wide-awake, and 
sent to the Government of St. Mark a list, furnished 
by his spies, of all those workmen who had been in- 
duced to desert Murano by the advantages which M. 
d'Avaux held out to them ; and the Senate, which 
never trifled and simply saw in this a crime against 
the State, put forth through the organ of the Inquis- 
itors the following decree : 

^^ If any workmen or artist transports his art into 
a foreign country to the detriment of the Republic, 
he shall be sent an order to return ; if he does not 
obey, his nearest relatives shall be imprisoned, so as 
to reduce him to obedience by his interest in them ; 



364 VENICE. 

if he returns, the past will be pardoned and an estab- 
lishment in Venice will be procured for hira ; and if, 
in spite of the imprisonment of his relatives, he is 
still determined to live abroad, an emissary will be 
charged to kill him, and after his death, his relatives 
will be set at liberty.'' 

It will hardly have been expected that a chapter 
devoted to the industries concerned with toilet-lux- 
ury, and to Venetian point lace in particular, should 
close with such a dramatic extract, but there is no 
doubt about the decision of the Inquisitors ; it is 
historical, and the article I have just quoted is 
the twenty-sixth in the statutes of the State Inqui- 
sition. 

Though other European countries succeeded in es- 
tablishing an industry which had taken its rise in 
Italy, and created such flourishing centres of produc- 
tion as Alengon, Argentan, Sedan, Mirecourt, Malines, 
Bruges, Brussels, Honiton, Bedford, Buckingham, 
Oxford, it is none the less true that the initiative had 
been taken by the Venetians. 

Of trimmings in cut point, bobbin, or bone lace, 
specimens are given in the folio work of J. Seguin, 
La DanteUe ; they were designed for embroiderers 
and lace-makers of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries, and preceded Venice point proper. We 
have seen that great artists did not disdain to ap- 
ply their inventive ingenuity to the composition of 
patterns of this kind. After Vecellio came Vinciola, 



LACE. 3G5 

la Parasolcj le Pompe. Lace was used for almost 
everything; a sixteenth-century fan in the collection 
of Achille Jubinal shows a design of cut point applied 
to an ordinary object for which it certainly was not 
intended. Even gloves might be made of lace, and 
even on those large sixteenth-century collars — heavy 
flat ruffs supported by a copper fencing that impris- 
oned the head like an instrument of torture — the 
workmen traced branches and fanciful scrolls with 
their needles in raised point. A trimming for a body 
in rose point, a charming piece of seventeenth-cen- 
tury Venetian work, shows that the heaviness of the 
raised point is intentional or was dictated by fashion, 
and that the same needle can run lightly in charming 
arabesques borrowed from Indian and Persian de- 
signs. We have limited ourselves here to the con- 
sideration of pieces that are purely Venetian, and if 
our short and rather vague raggionamenti leave 
much to be desired from the point of view of a 
special treatise on lace, which it was far from our 
intention to undertake, at least we shall have cha- 
racterized the different styles and successive trans- 
formations of the art from the sixteenth to the end 
of the seventeenth century, the period at which the 
industries of Venice lost their pre-eminence. 



366 VENICE. 

COSTUME. 

In a former study entitled La Vie dhm Patricien 
de Venice an seizihne siecle, the author endeavored 
to investigate the life of that time by the help of 
purely Venetian engravings and paintings of the fif- 
teenth and sixteenth centuries. The books con- 
taining the engravings referred to are always rare, 
often unique and priceless. We obtained valuable 
data from four principal sources. 

The library of St. Mark's opened its doors wide 
to uSj thanks to the learned librarian Veludo and 
his obliging subordinate Signer Soranzo. Next, 
the cabinet of engravings in the French National 
Library : the direct intervention of M. W^addington, 
then Minister of Public Instruction, was exerted to 
remove some obstacles in our way. The British 
Museum, that vast collection of documents, never 
puts restrictions to its liberality. The library of 
M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot, a celebrated collection 
now dispersed to the four corners of the world, was 
opened to us by the family of that great typographer 
and learned Hellenist with a cordiality and generosity 
to which we wish here publicly to render homage. 
Here we found the admirable '^Procession of the 
Doge " in eight blocks, reference to which has already 
been made ; likewise the " Ceremony of the Marriage 
of the Sea'' in eleven large blocks, and a number 
of other pieces which throw a new light on the 



COSTUME. 367 

customs and the costume of Venice at the Renais- 
sance, and make it seem to live afresh before our 
eyes. 

The compilations of Pietro Bertelli and Giacomo 
Franco serve specially to illustrate the subject of 
Venetian costume. The engraving by Franco 
(dating from 1560) ^^Dogaressa and her Maids of 
Honor/^ has a real interest as showing us the wife 
of the Doge in her official costume. She wears the 
cornOj the symbol of the ducal dignity ; it is no 
longer, as in the case of the Serene Prince himself, 
a coronet enriched with pearls and precious stones, 
but a simple head-dress to which the form of the 
corno was given and from which hung a long veil 
falling on the shoulders. The dress is of gold 
brocade ; from the throat hangs the gold chain and 
cross, the insignia of her supreme rank. The maids 
of honor, very simple if compared with the noble 
ladies in gala costume, have in their dress really 
very little that is characteristic, except the high 
pleated collar which furnishes the bodice. It shows 
that the fashion of uncovering the shoulders and 
neck does not date from yesterday, and that how- 
ever far this fashion may have been carried in 
France at the time of the Directory, the prudent 
dames who served as ladies-in-waiting to the wife 
of the Most Serene Prince carried it perhaps 
even farther than the Aspasias of the Salon of 
Barras. It is true, on the other hand, that the 



368 VENICE. 

ample skirts and tight sleeves are of monastic 
decorum. 

In the precious album of Giacomo^ the Serene 
Prince appears in grand official costume, the corno 
on his head. The inscriptions added by the great 
engraver are of great importance to history ; for 
he is very accurate in details ; this is the holiday 
costumcj Vhahito delle ceremonie e feste, and by the 
date of the drawing we can even tell the name of 
the prince — Pascal Cicogna, who reigned as Doge 
for ten years ; he wears the gold robe and ermine 
cape. Everything is characteristic of the sixteenth 
century, the little window showing the lagoon and 
St. Mark's Place ; the simple artist has himself 
written ^'Piazza San Marco'' in the sky. Every 
point in these pictorial evidences teaches us some- 
thing : the armchair with its fine gold studs and 
pleated leather ; the tapestry in the background, 
which would make the happiness of a collector of 
sixteenth-century curiosities, if he had the good 
fortune to come across it in some of the curiosity 
shops on the Grand Canal, at Guggenheim's, Rieti's, 
or Favanza's. 

Franco also shows us the admiral of the Arsenal — 
'' Capitano generale dell' Armata." Are we wrong 
in attaching importance to the slightest stroke of 
the ancient graver ? it is not all evidence ? Giacomo 
has written an inscription under the picture, which 
makes it much more than a matter of costume — it 



COSTUME. 369 

is history, and great and serious history too: ^^I 
Capitani generali delF Armata sogliono vestire ques- 
to habito quale fu v° gia il Ser° Sebastiano Veniero 
quando fracasse Farmata Turca a Curzolari Fanno 
1572.'' We are thus brought face to face with 
Sebastiano Veniero, elected Doge after his great 
victory of Lepanto : and in the distance framed by 
the window there is a view of the famous encounter, 
where the galleys of Don Juan of Austria, those of 
Doria and of the Republic, are about to sink the 
fleet of the Sublime Porte. I must beg connoisseurs 
not to neglect looking at the little stool of carved 
wood, on which the conqueror of Lepanto is seated. 
Alessandro Vittoria must Piave put his name to it, 
and the heraldic Lion of St. Mark is the seal of the 
Republic. The engraving may be lost, the xiame 
of the artist may disappear, Venice is still unmis- 
takable, the leonine paw of the winged creature is 
a signature not to be gainsaid. 

Pietro Bertelli portrays the costumes of all classes, 
from women of loose life mounted on their pattens 
to the maid of honor, the fiancee ^ and the wife ; then 
come the senators, the magistrates (prefetti, says the 
inscription) with their swords, the noble in his 
winter apparel, the matron, the novice with the 
ballarinOy the widow, the matron holding in her 
hand those small fans which were the fashion at 
Constantinople, and also the Venetian woman bleach- 
ing her hair and letting it dry on the terrace where 
2i 



370 VENICE. 

she sits before her little mirror, with her pot of dye 
which contains the essence destined to give it those 
golden lights dear to Veronese. 

A most strange figure is that of a Venetian 
courtesan mounted on her pattens, with her open 
dress, her slashed hose and doublet, and hair frizzled 
in horns. This could not have been invented, it is 
a witness which bespeaks nature itself, something 
actually seen and faithfully copied. And the fine 
portrait of a noble Venetian lady of the sixteenth 
century by Giacomo Franco, is a very vision of the 
time ; here is the little dog then in fashion, and the 
same way of dressing the hair, but better explained, 
being shown on a larger scale. What a costume for 
a carnival ! — if the women of to-day were to con- 
sent to hide their slender figures in these curious 
bodices, which instead of following the lines of the 
body form a kind of stifi* sheath about it. 

Goltzius is one of those who, with Matteo Pagani, 
Titian, Salviati, and some others, best enables us to 
understand the pomp of Venetian ceremonials. Gia- 
como Franco had also rendered them, but with a 
rather dry touch, and in a form which does not 
allow of our seizing the details. The ^' Venetian 
Marriage '' is indeed a monument, and though it 
was not a Venetian artist who engraved this master- 
piece, it initiates us well into the aspect of these 
State gatherings, which had for their stage the great 
chambers of the palaces built by Sansovino or 



COSTUME. 371 

Palladio. The engraving exhibits senators assembled 
in a loggia, wide open, from whence can be seen 
the lagoon and an island which if I am not mistaken 
should be Santa Elena. It is the hour of the feast, 
the guests are conversing, listening to the music, 
the musicians are in an open gallery and the maskers 
of the Italian comedy, Pantaloon and Burchiello^ 
show their painted faces through the curtain and 
ask for admittance. 

If there should be question of still more sumptu- 
ous feasts and characteristic costumes, a miniature 
of Bronzino once at Strawberry Hill contains the 
portrait of a susceptible Venetian lady, the famous 
Bianca Capello ; she appears in a perfectly French 
costume, which had at this time come into fashion in 
Venice. Her history is one of the legends of the 
city. I know the worthy gentleman who now lives 
in her house ; he has often shown me the window 
from which (too little watched by Bartolommeo 
Capello, her father) she exchanged glances with the 
handsome Florentine, Piero di Zenobia Bonaven- 
turi. 

On November 28, 1563, Bianca at the dead of 
night gave her hand to the gallant Zenobia, glided 
with him under the hangings of the silent gondola, 
and fled from her father's house ; arrived at Florence, 
the two lovers were united by the Church, but soon 
she began to receive the attentions of the Grand 
Duke Francesco de' Medici, and the husband died 



372 VENICE. 

just in time to crown the wishes of the Signer. The 
marriage feasts of Bianca Capello were so splendid 
that the painters and engravers of the time have 
immortalized them. A contemporary engraving 
gives one of the allegorical cars, drawn by lions, 
which formed part of the procession. These lions 
astonish us, but they are altogether in Italian taste ; 
above all, let us not forget the name borne by the 
husband : he was a Medici. When Lucrezia Borgia 
entered Rome, she was followed by two hundred 
ladies on horseback, all magnificently adorned and 
each accompanied by a cavalierc Lorenzo de' Medici 
one day gave a mythological fete, '^ The Triumph of 
Camillus ;'^ he erected for it ten triumphal arches, 
under which passed eight such chariots. Lorenzo 
wrote to the Pope for two elephants to complete the 
procession, and the Pope, who probably had not two 
elephants at hand, sent him two leopards and a pan- 
ther. Jacopo Nardi, Pontormo, Piero di Cosimo, 
and Baccio Bandinelli had made a special study of 
these compositions and inventions for festival proces- 
sions, and if it astonishes any one to see wild beasts 
harnessed to the car, we have under our eyes chron- 
icles which explain that at the marriage of Bianca 
some lions and tigers were actually on show, but 
that for drawing the mythological chariots the artist 
who got up the pageant had harnessed horses and 
mules in lion's skins. They sometimes went so far 
at these ceremonies as to dress up buffaloes as ele- 



COSTUME. 373 

phantSj and horses as winged griffins^ which gave to 
the procession the most fantastic appearance. 

Such were the colossal proportions of these amuse- 
ments, which borrowed their magnificence from the 
superb taste of the great artists of the Eenaissance, 
and of which printing and engraving have trans- 
mitted the remembrance to us. Giacomo Franco is 
still valuable for his representations of every-day 
life ; in his picture of the Arsenal he has thrown 
a bright light on the aspect and habit on pay- 
day at that establishment ; for the daily life '' in the 
Piazza/' he tells us a trait of the time which has its 
value. All day long, it seems (about 1550), the 
Piazza was encumbered with mountebanks, who 
erected their booths and came to play their antics 
and la^^i before the assembled people. Some ex- 
hibited serpents, others sold drugs, played on the 
harp or guitar, put on strange masks and gave them- 
selves up to a thousand contortions to amuse the 
crowd. By a curious engraving of the time it is 
seen that the precious loggetta did not yet exist at 
the foot of the Campanile, and by the rude perspec- 
tive of the gate of the Merceria, and that of the 
Basilica and of the Procuratie which appear in the 
background, that it was on the Piazzetta and not on 
on the Piazza that this permanent fair was held. It 
is curious to observe that Franco has written under 
the figures of the spectators in the foreground the 
nationality of each, as if by this simple and natural 



374 VENICE. 

means he wished to show that Venice served as a 
meeting-place for all mankind^ and to illustrate his 
city from a cosmopolitan point of view. 

A portrait of Alois Contarini, of the great family 
of the Contarini who were so devoted to the Repub- 
licj painted by Jost Euhler, shows a senator of the 
seventeenth century wearing the large ^Miammer'' 
wig. The custom came from France^ the court of 
Louis XIV. having furnished the model ; the robe 
of the senators is the same^ but the aspect of the man 
is singularly altered; instead of the long beards of 
Titian and Tintoret's time^ instead of those grave 
and noble countenances which Bassano and Veronese 
have perpetuated upon their canvases^ nothing is to 
be seen now but shaven faces ; and this remains the 
rule until the nineteenth century, when every one 
again assumes liberty of action, and beards reappear 
in Venice. 

Bartolozzi is of the eighteenth century, and for 
that period evidences relating to costume and man- 
ners are not scarce. The taste is simple enough. In 
one picture a Venetian dressed in a coat of the style 
called after Louis XV. with silk stockings, shoe 
buckles, and the three-cornered hat of the time, has 
put on over these a carnival domino and the curious 
mask so often seen in Guardi called the JBauta, He 
is going along the streets of Venice and meets a car- 
nival Cupid, who asks him for alms ; this exhibits 
well the tastes of the time. In an accompanying 



COSTUME. 375 

picture he has just crossed a bridge — that of San 
Moise^ I think — and Cupid aims arrow at him. 
Nothing can be more in Pompadour vein than this 
Bartolozzij but nothing is without value to us that 
can furnish any evidence of the social aspect of an 
epoch. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE APPROACH TO THE CITY— THE GRAND CANAL. 

To taste in all their fulness his first impressions 
of Venice^ the traveller should arrive there by sea, 
at midday, when the sun is high. By degrees, as 
the ship which carries him enters the channels, he 
will see the unparalleled city emerging from the lap 
of the lagoon, with its proud campaniles, its golden 
spires, its gray or silvery domes and cupolas. Ad- 
vancing along the narrow channels of navigation, 
posts and piles dot here and there wath black that 
sheet of steel, and give substance to the dream, 
making solid and tangible the foreground of the il- 
lusive distance. Just now, all that enchanted world 
and fairy architecture floated in the air ; little by 
little all has become distinct ; those points of dark 
green turn into gardens ; that mass of deep red is 
the line of the ship-building yards, with their lep- 
rous-looking houses and with the dark-colored stocks 
on wdiich are erected the skeletons of polaccas and 
feluccas in course of construction ; the white line 
showing so bright in the sun is the Riva dei Schia- 
voni, all alive with its world of gondoliers, fruit- 
sellers, Greek sailors, and Chioggiotes in their 
376 



Grand Canal^ Church of San Geremia and Entrance 
to the Canare§:§:io 



THE APPKOACH TO THE CITY. 377 

many-colored costumes. The rose-colored palace 
with the stunted colonnade is the Ducal Palace. 
The vessel^ on its way to cast anchor off the Piaz- 
zetta, coasts round the white and rose-colored island 
which carries Palladio's church of Santa Maria Mag- 
giore, whose firm campanile stands out against the 
sky with Grecian clearness and grace. Looking over 
the bowj the traveller has facing him the Grand 
Canal, with the Custom House where the figure of 
Fortune veers with the wind above her golden ball ; 
beyond rise the double domes of the Salute with 
their great reversed consoles, forming the most ma- 
jestic entrance to this watery avenue bordered by 
palaces. He who comes for the first time to Venice 
by this route realizes a dream — his only dream per- 
haps ever destined to be surpassed by the reality ; and 
if he knows how to enjoy the beauty of nature, if he 
can take delight in silver-gray and rose-colored re- 
flections in water, if he loves light and color, the 
picturesque life of Italian squares and streets, the 
good humor of the people and their gentle speech 
which seems like the twittering of birds, let him 
only allow himself to live for a little time under the 
sky of Venice, and he has before him a season of 
happiness without alloy. 

But if, instead of entering Venice by the Adri- 
atic, the visitor comes from France or the Peninsula, 
and crosses at night the long viaduct which connects 
the town with the mainland, what a strange impres- 



378 VENICE. 

sion he will receive ! To glide silently in the middle 
of the night over stilly black waters, to see glimmer- 
ing lanterns flitting right and left, to hear the splash 
of an oar on the water, to glide between high banks 
of architecture^ processions of palaces that flit by 
more felt than seen, as in an etching of Piranesi, — 
to pass under bridges, hear cries without catching 
their meaning, every moment to brush past those 
sombre catafalques which are other gondolas gliding 
through the darkness as silently as your own, — then, 
from time to time, to see as in a flash of lightning 
the outline of a figure leaning forward on its oar, a 
lamp burning and casting^ a keen reflection at the 
corner of a winding canal^ a window brilliantly 
lighted and making a flaring hole in the midst of 
night, — to get entangled in dark water-lanes, turn- 
ing, twisting, moving Avithout the feeling of move- 
ment, and all at once to land at a staircase which 
plunges its steps down into the water and leads into 
a large and noble hall of fine architectural propor- 
tions, in a palace gleaming with lights, full of life 
and activity, and of busy men who bring one back 
after that strange journey to the commonplaces of 
hotel life,^ — this is certainly the most wonderful of 
dreams, a sort of ideal nightmare. 

It has all scarcely lasted an hour ; but you are 
tired from a long journey ; you soon fall asleep from 
weariness, hardly asking yourself, in the first uncer- 
tainty of fatigue, over what Styx you have sailed; 



THE APPKOACH TO THE CITY. 379 

what strange city you have traversed, and whether 
you have not been the dupe of a dream. In the 
morning you rush out upon the balcony, and there, 
amidst dazzling light and a very debauch of colors, 
with a shimmering of pearl and silver, triumphant 
upon the waters of her lagoon you behold that 
Venice which you have never seen before except in 
Byron, in Otway, Musset, and George Sand. She 
glows, she sings in silvery radiance ; here in very 
truth is the Queen of the Adriatic! A pigeon of 
St. Mark's flies over the balcony throwing its 
shadow on the flagstones, and you cherish the long- 
awaited sight ! Here are the islands, the Arsenal, 
the Lido, the Mole, the Redentore, Santa Maria 
Maggiore, the Ducal Palace, the gondoliers ; in a 
word, all the city of Canaletto ! But is it not an 
illusive scene, a phantasmagoria, a treacherous 
dream ? — if it were but a mirage after all ! 

And when you begin to wander about the town, 
stupefied, dazzled, confused, blinded ; when you go 
into the museums, the churches ; when cradled in 
your gondola you pass down that marvellous avenue 
the Grand Canal ; when you shall have seen face to 
face, in their full glory, Veronese, Tintoret, Vittoria, 
the gentle Carpaccio, the Bellini, those sweet and 
solemn masters, the Vivarini, the Palmas, the great 
Titian, Sansovino, Verocchio, the Lombardi, the 
elegant and noble Leopardi, Calendario the rebel, 
whose genius did not save him from condign punish- 



380 VENICE. 

nient ; when you shall have viewed all these painters, 
sculptors, architects, these mighty spirits who, in the 
palaces of the Doges, at the Frari, in the Arsenal, 
at Sante Maria Formosa, at San Rocco and the Pro- 
curatie, or on either bank of the Grand Canal, have 
celebrated the glory of Venice with their gorgeous 
palettes, have moulded and carved the bronze and 
marble with their puissant hands, have raised to the 
sky the clear profiles of the campaniles in their hues 
of white and rose, have cast upon the green mirror 
of the waters of Canareggio the delicate network of 
Gothic palaces, or the sudden projections of classic 
entablatures and balconies, — after all this, you will 
come in worn out, confused, overwhelmed by the 
force and greatness of these men of the Renaissance, 
and you will call out to your gondolier, '^ To the 
Lido,'' in order that you may find rest in nature from 
the dazzling things of art. In another week you 
will be looking at Tintoret with a careless eye, for 
masterpieces crowd too thick upon one another ; 
bronzes, enamels^ triptychs, marbles, figures of 
Doges lying on the sculptured tombs, famous con- 
dottieri buried in their armor, or standing haughty 
and valorous in full panoply on their mausoleums, 
will leave you indifferent. You are hungry for open 
air, for the lagoon, the changing aspects of the pearl- 
gray waves, for nature's own reflections as Guardi 
and. Canaletto caught them, for the shimmer of light 
on sheets of liquid steel broken by tongues of sand 



THE GRAND CANAL. 381 

and dotted by the black points and uprights of the 
piles. As you get farther from the shore^ you turn 
to enjoy the view, for it is the most splendid scene 
ever dreamed by the imagination ; and before this 
picture of Venice — a picture signed by the Master 
of masters — you forget the immortal works made by 
hands that have been stiff for centuries. 

THE GEAND CANAL. 

I suppose that the reader has entered Venice from 
the mainland, and I have described the curious sen* 
sation he experiences if he arrives at night ; but if, 
in fine spring weather, or on an autumn afternoon 
toward the month of October, the train which brings 
him from France or Italy leaves him on the station 
quay in the Grand Canal, the row he will have in 
his gondola from the station to the heart of the town 
is an admirable prologue to the spectacle that awaits 
him in Venice. 

Seated for the first time on the black cushions of 
the open gondola, nothing interrupts the view ; you 
glide between two wide banks over the great water- 
way which makes that one unique city into two ; and 
with Italian good humor, combined with that cour- 
tesy peculiar to the Venetians, your gondolier tells 
you the names of all the buildings and palaces. 
The effect is prodigious and always new. First of 
all, to any one who knows how to look and see, tlie 
liquid surface of the Canal is itself a spectacle. 



382 VEXICE. 

Green, but of a peculiar green^ cliangingj made up 
of all the tints by which it is surrounded, sometimes 
deep, sometimes pearly, sometimes black — marbled, 
flashing or opaque according to the angle from which 
it is seen — undulating, diverse and composed of a 
thousand reflected shades, the water has its own 
peculiar attractions for colorists. The great posts, 
variegated with blue and red colors and the arms of 
nobles, crowned with the corno or the count's coro- 
net — the marble steps dipping into the water — 
palaces in the architecture of every race and age, 
sometimes solemn, epic, stately, massive, and heavy, 
carrying an enormous weight on the piles which 
serve for their foundations — -the whole history of 
Venice is there. Just after passing the rich church 
which rises at the new gate of the station, and leav- 
ing to the left the Labbia Palace, where are found, 
dilapidated and doomed to certain ruin, the marvel- 
lous decorations of Tiepolo referred to in the chapter 
on Painting, we pass in front of the Fondaco dei 
Turchi. The precious collections of the Correr 
Museum are to be installed there, the small neigh- 
boring palace being too small for such riches. We 
can but hastily name the great names of the build- 
ings before which we pass ; here the Vendramin 
Calergi, the Battagia, Tron, and Vendramin Palaces, 
the Casa d'Oro which we have so often mentioned 
already ; the Pesaro Palace, pompous and heavy, all 
covered with sculptures bearing the mark of Lon- 



THE GRAND CANAL. 383 

ghena, the artist who built the Salute ; Corner Re^ 
gina, which stands in the very place where Queen 
Cornaro lived ; Sagredo^ Michel delle Colonne, the 
fahbriche nuove of the Rialto of Sansovino, the old 
porticoes of the Rialto, the vegetable-market, so 
picturesque with its great, long, flat boats laden with 
angiirie and cocomeri^ gourds and pumpkins of all 
shapes and kinds, mountains of cabbages and green 
things coming from the mainland or the islands, to 
supply this busy scene, at which we should advise 
painters to make a halt after they have visited the 
Rialto. 

Before passing under the stately and vigorous 
arch which spans the Grand Canal, and bears dra- 
pers^ and goldsmiths' shops on its broad span, the 
visitor should look to right and left, and stop for a 
moment to notice the details of the charming friezes 
of that palace of the Camerlenghi which the Re- 
public had built for her treasures to live in, and for 
the design for which she had commissioned Berga- 
masco. On his left, the large building now defaced, 
but the great mass of which is still beautiful, is the 
Fondaco dei Tedeschi, in other times the residence 
of the German merchants, which had been decorated 
at the expense of the Republic by Giorgione and 
Titian. When we see even now on these walls 
patches of red and half-effaced outlines of the com- 
positions drawn by those famous painters, our imagi- 
nation supplements the ravages of time. What a 



384 VENICE. 

wonderful and magical sight the Grand Canal must 
have presented about 1570, at the time when the 
Republic was at its highest pride, when the Doge 
Paschal Cicogna was about to connect the two banks 
by having the Rialto built by Da Ponte ! And if 
one calls up in imagination one of those solemn 
entries of Prince or Ambassador, with all the bril- 
liant pageantry of the bissone or State gondolas, and 
the crowd of small boats following the procession, 
the thousands of heads on the richly-draped bal- 
conies, the streamers, the cries, the reflections of 
bright colors, the sound of bells, the whole town in 
festal array, and over all the azure sky and the in- 
tense sun lighting up every corner and awakening 
thousands of shimmering reflections in the green 
waters : what a triumphant orgy and display of 
color and character ! 

Let us pass under the Rialto, stopping a moment 
on the left to look at the life of the quay nearest to 
it. Here is the Fish-market, and very curious and 
full of life it is, smelling of course of its business, 
but having an interesting character of its own, with 
its brown and black hues, its sombre boats, its great 
baskets like our hen-coops, in which the fresh fish is 
kept ; and all that fisher-people in brown cloth, — 
the famous seamen of the Adriatic whom Leopold 
Robert has painted in their ordinary life without 
idealism or conventionality, — and the old fish-wives 
huddled in brown shawls, with their frizzled gray 



THE GRAND CANAL. 385 

Iiair^ their feet in those small Venetian sabots fas- 
tened on by a leather thong, the wooden soles 
knocking against the flags ; — all that strange world 
of popular types which illustrators love to render. 
Past the Eialto we still find more palaces with 
noble outlines ; the Loredano, Farsetti, Grimani (the 
work of Sammicheli), Corner Spinelli, Tiepolo, 
Doria^ Bernardo, Barbarigo, Pisani {one of the 
greatest of Venetian names), Mocenigo (a house 
twice illustrious, from the family after which it is 
named, and from Lord Byron), lastly Balbi and 
Moro Lin, Here let us look backward ; it is an 
important point of the canal, the turning or elbow ; 
and the two palaces which, joined to one another^ fill 
the angle, the Giustiniani and Foscari, occupy the 
particular point which allows them to command the 
whole of the canal from both sides. It was usually 
here that the Eepublic entertained sovereigns and 
princes when holiday was kept on the Grand Canal, 
so that they might have a complete view of its 
length. It was here that, on solemn days in the 
modern history of Venice, — when Victor Emmanuel 
took possession of the city ; when the ashes of 
Daniel Manin were restored to his fellow citizens 
from on board the Bitcentaiir at the steps of the 
Ducal Palace, — we were ourselves enabled to be 
present at that splendid spectacle, and to realize, 
while enjoying the sight, the part which these two 
palaces played in the solemn days of reception de- 

25 



386 VENICE. 

scribed in the Venetian chronicles. After we pass 
the Giustiniani Palace^ here are successively the 
Palaces RezzonicOj Grassi, Contarini Sgrigni, Ca- 
valli (which belongs to the Comte de Chambord) 
Corner della Ca Grande, the Academy of Fine Arts. 
There a quite modern iron bridge joins the two 
banks : it is in the ancient convent on our right, now 
converted into a Museum and School of Fine Art, 
that we should go to study the history of Venetian 
painting. Still following on, one comes upon an 
exquisite work, of pleasant proportions and in ex- 
tremely good taste, the Dario Palace, then the small 
Contarini Palace, the Imo Palace, the Giustiniani 
Palace, now turned into an hotel, like most of those 
at the entrance to the Grand Canal ; lastly the 
majestic Church of the Salute, one of the most 
famous in Venice, and the marine Custom House, 
which closes so fittingly that avenue of palaces with 
its open pavilion and the golden ball of Fortune 
turning with the wind. The opening into the lagoon 
at the mouth of the Grand Canal is perhaps the 
point of view with which those who have never been 
at Venice are the most familiar. It is the great 
facade of the town under its most attractive aspect. 
Before landing at the Piazzetta, where the gondola 
will set us down at the steps which ascend between 
the two famous granite columns bearing St. Theodore 
and the lion of St. Mark, let us look in front of us 
for a moment. The island which floats before us, 



THE GRAND CANAL. 387 

carrying a church with its graceful campanile — that 
rosy and picturesque island placed just where the 
eye desires it most — is San Giorgio Maggiore. 
Behind this^ in the distance, the line of green trees 
which seems to close in the lagoon is Garden Point, 
the extreme end of Venice^ connected with the 
centre by the beautiful white line of that magnificent 
quay, the Riva dei Schiavoni, the name of which has 
occurred so often in our volume. If, standing up in 
our gondola, we look to the right, we see first a wide 
canal between the Custom House and the Giudecca, 
which separates from the town that desolate quarter 
where manufactories and various industries have 
taken refuge ; a gray cupola supported on rose- 
colored walls cuts the lower horizontal of the house 
roofs : this is the Redentore, a celebrated church 
which on its saint's day summons all Venice to an 
honored commemoration. 

We shall return presently to the aspect of the 
Riva. Let us take our station meanwhile on ten^a 
firma^ standing on the granite quay at the foot of 
the two columns erected by Barattieri, and from 
thence look round on the public, the official Venice. 
We have the Ducal Palace on our right, and on the 
left the Libreria Vecchia, a wonderful building by 
Sansovino, certainly one of the noblest and purest in 
style of any in Venice ; past the Libreria, returning 
on the quay, is the Zecca, the ancient mint of the 
Republic : then comes a rather large garden belong- 



388 VENICE. 

ing to the palace-block, now the Royal Palace, 
formed of the Libreria Vecchia and the Procnratie 
together. At the extreme end of the quay on our 
left, a small casino, elegant enough m style though 
dating from the Empire, serves now as a cafe ; here 
in summer-time there is music, and the crowd comes 
to listen to the band, to promenade or eat ices in the 
freshness of the lagoon breezes. Finally, opposite 
to us on the right, rises the Basilica of St. Mark, 
presenting to us its flank crowned with domes and 
pinnacles, the clock-tower with its blue dial, its 
quaint but at the same time monumental bell which 
rings to the hammers of two bronze men standing 
on its terrace, and its arch of the Merceria, beneath 
which we see the crowd appear and disappear. A 
little in the rear rises the Campanile, immense, 
mighty, solid, and elegant at once, with the richly- 
decorated Loggetta crouching at its feet. 

We need not return to consider either the Ducal 
Palace or the Basilica of St. Mark from an historical 
or descriptive point of view, since our whole book is 
but so much description of the historical origin of 
individual monuments. 

Still, as we wish to describe the life^ and especially 
now that we have spoken at length on matters of art 
of Venice, I would invite the reader to enter St. 
Mark's with me on a fete day, — on Passion Sunday, 
for instance, at the hour of mass. Each person 
takes his seat where he likes and when he likes, 



Piazzetta of St* Mark^ with a View of tlie Island of 
San Giorgio 



THE GRAND CANAL. 389 

choosing the altar of the saint of his particular wor- 
ship^ his dearest relic, or privileged object of de- 
votion, and while some are praying in the choir, 
leaning in singular attitudes against the porphyry 
balustrade, others have gone to kneel in the little 
chapel built to the miraculous image of Christ which, 
it is said, shed blood when struck by a profane 
hand; the figure stands under a little dome with 
columns of black-and-white porphyry surmounted 
with agate. 

While the priest is officiating in purple and gold 
before the magnificent Pala d'Oro, and while a prince 
of the Church surrounded by a legion of canons ele- 
vates the sacred ciborium, — crouching at the foot of 
some pillar, sitting on the steps of the stairs, pros- 
trate in obscure corners you see the groups ab- 
sorbed in prayer, old sibyl-like women seeming 
transfigured in the depths of deserted chapels, and 
beggars covered with ragged shawls coming and 
kissing the feet of porphyry statues. Sometimes — 
strange meeting — a woman with wan face directs her 
prayers to some great hieratic image of a saint, who 
stands immovable and colossal, a decorated figure 
draped in the stiff folds of the Byzantine dalmatic, 
his great three-lobed nimbus standing out from a 
background of tawny gold mosaic. People come in 
and go out and pray and sing ; profane strangers 
come to see St. Mark's with guide-books in their 
hands ; sacristans in strange vestments push to and 



390 VENICE. 

fro upon the floor their pierced offertory-boxes for 
the help of souls in purgatory ; and all without 
order^ conventionality^ or religious discipline ; it 
is the house of God, but it is also the house of 
man. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

ST. MAKK'S PLACE— THE CAENIVAL— TYPES OF THE 
PEOPLE. 

An oblong quadrilateral which on one side reaches 
from the corner of the Ducal Palace to the Basilica^ 
and on the other from the corner of the Libreria 
Vecchia to that of the Procuratie, comprises the 
celebrated Piazzetta^ the ^^ little square'' where pub- 
lic proclamations were read. Let us cross it and 
enter the square — that called the Piazza as if there 
were no other. Let us traverse its whole length, 
and from the end look round and enjoy the sight. 
Facing us in its full glory stands the incomparable 
basilica ; in front of it are the four bronze pedestals 
of Leopardi which carry the banners of the Repub- 
lic ; on our left are the Old Procuratie with their ar- 
caded stories ; on our right the New Procuratie ; and 
curiously placed in the right-hand corner rises the 
Campanile. 

This view embraces the official part of the town. 
We shall see, in this chapter on Venetian life, what 
part the Piazza plays in the existence of the Vene- 
tians. Without going very far back in history, as we 
have taken the opportunity of doing once or twice 

391 



392 VENICE. 

for the study of origins, we can easily imagine the 
aspect J if not of a public holiday on the occasion of 
the procession of the Doge or the reception of a 
prince or ambassador, at any rate of an ordinary day, 
while the business of public life was going on. In 
St. Mark's, which was originally the chapel of the 
Doge, God was worshipped with praise and suppli- 
cation on behalf of the State, and every great po- 
litical act was consecrated by prayer or religious 
ceremonial. St. Mark's was the Palladium of the 
city. In the Old and New Procuratie are the public 
offices and seats of administration. There the Pro- 
curatori had their official residences, their archives, 
and within two steps from there, are concentrated all 
the public services and deliberative bodies. 

To form a just idea of the geographical site of 
Venice, it is necessary to go to the top of the Cam- 
panile. The bird's-eye view which we here imagine 
would then become real to the spectator, and the 
configuration of the town, which is so difficult for 
any one who has not seen it to realize, would then 
stand out in all distinctness. To the east, the open 
sea ; all around, the lagoons, the islands ; all the 
picturesque accidents and indentures of the gulf; 
the mainland with the Alps and the mountains of 
Vicenza on the horizon. The ascent is very easy ; 
the Campanile has no steps, but is ascended like the 
Giralda at Seville, by an inclined passage up which 
one might ride at need. The city seems to lie at one's 



VENETIAN LIFE— THE CARNIVAL. 393 

feet, and the eighty islets of which it is formed, seen 
in this bold perspective, outline themselves distinctly 
with their bridges, pia^^e^ and campi. The Grand 
Canal divides the town with a visible winding line 
which measures more than two miles and a quarter 
in length, and sometimes reaches a width of nearly 
eighty yards. As it appears to us it is an S reversed, 
and we see the bridges which connect the two parts 
of the town, the Kialto, the Academy, and the rail- 
way bridges ; these two last are entirely modern. 
What strikes us most from the top of the Campanile 
is not that world of steeples^ that forest of bell-towers, 
those thousand roofs, that ocean of ];ricks and brown 
tiles ; it is the open sea on which you look down 
from that eminence, and the clearly defined estuary, 
the slender isthmus of the railway viaduct joining 
the town to the mainland, and that mainland itself 
crumbling, as it were, by degrees into ocean, chan- 
ging field into marsh, then into lagoon, and still reap- 
pearing in the shape of floating islands in the midst 
of the lagoon itself. 

The estuary or interior basin is five miles long and 
two broad. Venice herself at anchor in the middle, 
impregnable, or at least, strategically inaccessible, 
though she has in fact been taken, protected towards 
the sea by a narrow tongue of land called the Lido, 
the three passages of which are fortified. On tlie 
south floats the island of St. George, facing the Piaz- 
za, and the Giudecca, separated from the town by a 



394 VENICE. 

broad canal, along the quays of which are moored 
the great flat boats and trabacoU which come laden 
with wood from Istria and Dalmatia. From here 
you overlook two thousand one hundred and fifty 
little streets^ narrow stradme, a labyrinth in which 
the traveller would lose himself a hundred times if 
he did not quickly get to know his Venice by study- 
ing central points. 

Now let us come down from the Campanile, and 
before going any farther, let us wander under the 
Procuratie, and idle in front of the jewellers' shops, 
and the shops where corals and miniature gondolas 
are sold, the galanteriej the cafes, the crystal and 
Venetian glass shops^ the photographers', this last 
an art new to the country, but v/hich flourishes 
prodigiously now ; let us look at the various types^ 
from the pleasant flower-girls, who come and put a 
little sweet-smelling flower in your buttonhole with- 
out ever asking for their payment, which you hand 
them in a lump the day you leave, to the celebrated 
little hunchback, known to all the painters^ who 
plies a multitude of different callings. 

The cafes of St. Mark's Place are celebrated, and 
three are specially known to strangers : Florian's 
first of all — a tout seigneur tout honneur / next 
Quadri's ; and among ten others who have their 
regular fixed customers, Suttil has an old established 
reputation ; lastly the '' Aurora," frequented by 
Orientals. Florian's is known to the whole world, 



VENETIAN LIFE— TEE CARNIVAL. 395 

and if instead of writing a book in which art takes 
so great a place, I were writing a mere picturesque 
account of Venice, I could devote a whole chapter 
to Florian's. It is there that a stranger, or even a 
Venetian, has his letters addressed ; there on return- 
ing from a long absence you hear all the gossip 
about your friends and acquaintances — one is on the 
mainland, another abroad, a third has married — 
there you find the last scandal, the news, the visit- 
ing card of the new-comer, the commission, the 
communication you await : all are found in those 
curiously arranged little rooms in which the table 
is merely an accessory piece of furniture. Of 
Florian and his descendants there is nothing left 
now, as can well be understood, since he flourished 
in the time of the Empire. An anecdote is current 
which it is well to preserve, for it does credit to 
two men, a great artist and the keeper of the cafe. 
Canova, it is said, was a frequenter of Florian's, 
and the master of the house had rendered him 
many services ; the poor hotel-keeper had the gout, 
and the great sculptor modelled his leg in plaster 
so that he might have a shoe so fitted as to ease 
the pain. 

In the first days of summer or on a warm autumn 
night, Florian's presents a curious spectacle : wliile 
one is walking round the Piazza on the side of the 
Listone toward Quadri's, at the time the band plays, 
the tables fill and overflow till a quarter of the 



396 VENICE. 

square is filled ; it is the drawing-room of Venice, 
with the starlit sky for ceiling. 

In the day-time Florian's is nearly deserted, but 
at certain hours one goes there with the certainty 
of meeting those one wants to see, and the cafes of 
Venice are so well supplied with newspapers of all 
countries that one does not feel the need of a club. 
The visitor too might live in the Piazza; all day long 
it is animated and alive ; those great flights of 
pigeons which assemble suddenly in clouds at the 
sounds of the hammers of the clock, on the stroke 
of two o'clock, are one of the pleasantest amuse- 
ments of the traveller. Who has not during his 
stay in Venice given seed to those pretty little blue 
and violet-gray creatures, so used to the passers-by 
that they fly into your very hands to pick from 
them at their ease ? Who has not seen some pretty 
English girl, her hair floating in the wind, sur- 
rounded with the birds like a symbolical figure, the 
most delightful subject a painter could find for a 
picture ? A great deal has been written about these 
pigeons, and an historical origin has been discovered 
for them, in connection with the Genoese of Candia 
and a service rendered by the birds to the Eepublic; 
all this, however, is but hazy history. Whatever 
their origin, they are very numerous all over the 
town, but especially on the Piazza and the quays ; 
they build on the cornices, in the steeples, and in 
the atrium of St. Mark's, under the arcades of the 



VENETIAN LIFE— THE CAKNIVAL. 397 

Procuratie, and live on the munificence of the 
public. They have^ however, had an income of 
their own ; a certain Countess Polcastro, who lived 
in rooms at the corner of the Fabbrica Nuova and 
the Procuratie, distributed food to them on the 
stroke of two o'clock, during a great period of her 
life^ and after her death, if I am not mistaken, left 
a sum to be applied in the same way. 

At Carnival time it is still on the Piazza and the 
Piazzetta that processions file off, and that the ex- 
hibitions and performances peculiar to that giddy 
season take place. All this goes on to-day just as 
it did yesterday J or two hundred or even five 
hundred years ago, as is proved readily by a pretty 
composition of Vanutelli which is to be found in 
the gallery of the Princess Matilde. The painter 
has placed his scene under the arcades of the Ducal 
Palace ; it is there that even now a whole band of 
masqueraders come to play their la.^^i ; for this 
Carnival of Venice, which, like that of Rome, has 
been celebrated all over the world, — which has been 
the theme of poets and musicians, and on which 
Gozzi, Paganini and Theophile Gautier have con- 
structed their most delicate pi^mcati, — this carnival 
is not so dead as people would have us believe ; the 
tradition exists, if the genius of the people is 
changed. The carnival week, though quieter than 
it used to be, still attracts visitors ; it is the season. 
of intrigues and festivals^ when the whole popula- 



398 VENICE. 

tion seems intoxicated by the air they breathe. 
There are two very distinct parts in the Carnival 
of Venice : the carnival of the street and the carni- 
val of the drawing-room. In the good old time 
people went masked to St. Mark's Place and to 
the Fenice, and going from box to box gave them- 
selves up to merry mystifications which recalled the 
good days of Venice in the eighteenth century ; 
those were the days of supper parties and songs, 
serenades and fStes Venitiennes, — this word sums up 
all. Nowadays the aristocracy is discreet and re- 
served ; a few refined masquerades, a few masked 
balls given in a setting worthy of the costumes, a 
few suppers and serenades, and the fete is over. 
Guardi, the painter with the spirited touch and 
brilliant coloring, shows us the balls in the Ducal 
Palace, the Bidotti, the promenades of masquers on 
the Piazza, the little three-cornered hat with the 
lamp, and the Venetian cloak which has become the 
regular livery for carnival fun all over Europe. Of 
all this nothing now remains, and what is left can 
hardly be described and would escape the notice of 
a passing stranger ; one must be of Venetian origin 
to enter into these pleasures, to be admitted to them, 
and to appreciate their charm. 

But the street is more alive ; the trade corpora- 
tions come to an agreement, organize themselves, and 
club together to give the town a spectacle ; every 
year there is some new idea and a new arrangement ; 



VENETIAN LIFE— THE CARNIVAL. 399 

an allegorical car, a Bucentaur, some scene full of 
animation and color, of which the principal types are 
the heroes, Vesta, Zenda, Tato ; the illustrious Pan- 
taleone harangues the crowd from his throne erected 
on the Piazzetta in front of the two great granite 
columns. Pantaloon arrives at the head of his pro- 
cession, which has assembled in the court of the 
deserted convent of San Sepolcra ; he goes the whole 
length of the Eiva de' Schiavoni, preceded by his 
Turkish guards ; level bridges have been thrown 
across the canals which cut the quay, so that nothing 
interrupts the masquerade on its road. The painters 
of the Arsenal and of the boats, all in costume and 
organized into bands, sing choruses ; other municipal 
bodies form brass bands, for at Venice there is no 
fete wdthout music. The procession is long, and the 
whole town follows it ; men dressed up as Turks 
carry banners at the head, and a whole group is told 
off to guard them ; behind them come the Chiog- 
giotti, the fish-sellers of Chioggia, who carry on 
their arms elegant baskets filled with sugar fish which 
they throw on to the balconies everywhere along 
their route ; the street presents a number of those 
grotesque scenes which have been preserved by the 
brush of Guardi. 

After the Chioggiotti, who have their own band in 
medieval dress, come the epigrams, so called, of the 
year : these are monster masks, gigantic personages 
who recall those of the carnivals of the towns in the 



400 VENICE. 

north of France ; they may be numerous, and should 
always represent a satire or epigram, an allusion to 
some celebrity of the year, or to some event that has 
taken place, is symbolized in their persons. Often 
some political personage provides the subject of the 
jest, and many times the authorities had to interfere 
to prevent some foreign minister or sovereign being 
caricatured. 

After the great masks come groups of all kinds, 
following each other according to the popular fancy : 
but there is almost alwavs some o:overnin2r idea in 
the procession ; the actualities^ or burlesque groups 
representing passing events, form so many episodes 
which fit into the general frame : no one makes a 
mistake in them, and all applaud them. Arrived 
at the Piazzetta, Pantaloon, the king of the feast, 
mounts his throne and harangues the crowd in the 
Venetian dialect, and as he can wag his tongue 
well the populace receive him with acclamations. 
He descends, again takes the head of the proces- 
sion and directs his steps to the Piazza, in the 
middle of which a circular ball-room has been 
erected as high as the cafes Florian and Quadri. 
The bands take their place, and the most distin- 
guished characters lead the dances : the place is as 
crowded as it can hold, and the crowd is full of ani- 
mation, fun. and color : a great number are in fancy 
dress and take an active part in the amusements. 

This is the overture of the popular fete, the open- 



VENETIAN LIFE—THE CARNIVAL. 401 

ing of the carnival^ and as these people understand 
thoroughly the organization of amusements, each 
day brings its own pleasure and surprise. In the 
evening this Piazza we are describing is a fairy 
scene ; it is brilliantly lighted in a manner used only 
on these occasions : if the weather is fine, as the 
Piazza is flagged it is a regular ball-room where one 
can walk in dancing-shoes ; the cafes are crowded, 
the tables overflow into the middle of the square, 
and one can wander among the maze of people in the 
open air as in a gigantic ball-room. 

Coming away from the Piazza, let us enter the 
court of the Ducal Palace by the gate " della Carta,'' 
and pass before the beautiful Griants' Staircase, which 
we have described already, and to which a tragic 
reputation has been given by the tradition, propa- 
gated chiefly by painters and quite erroneous, that 
the head of Marino Faliero rolled down it. The 
famous picture by Robert Fleury and the equally 
celebrated picture by Eugene Delacroix support the 
tradition, so firmly was the story established ; but 
the mere comparison of the dates of the beheading 
of the Doge (April, 1354) and the construction of 
the staircase (1505) convict these great artists of 
anachronism. We are not now, however, seeking 
for either history or art ; the life of the place is 
our attraction, the delightful picture which presents 
itself in that court of the Ducal Palace composes 

26 



402 VENICE. 

itself every day at the same hour, soon to vanish and 
recompose itself again, — the gathering, namely, of 
the water-carriers of Venice round those fine |)ronze 
basins. 

The water question was a vital one for Venice ; 
the Republic took anxious thought for this service, 
which was regulated with an order and p^'ecision 
w^orthy of the great city. Instead of making plain 
parapets to these wells in the court of the palace, 
they made of them precious works of art, fitting 
ornaments for one of the finest specimens of medi- 
eval and Renaissance architecture. The beautiful 
court is enlivened by the presence of all these water- 
carriers, peasant women of the Friuli, Bigolante with 
olive skins and black hair, some with small felt hats, 
others with a band across their brown plaits ; bal- 
ancing their red copper pails ; firmly set on their 
hips, often very well made, with delicate joints and 
extremities ; the foot planted on the little wooden 
patten which rings along the flagstones. They leave 
the court without any particular order, some by the 
^^della Carta" court of the palace, some by the ar- 
cade of the Riva de' Schiavoni, and so scatter them- 
selves throughout the town. It will be noticed that 
this employment is left to the women. 

Before going out with the Bigolante on to the Riva 
de' Schiavoni, let us stop an instant. We found at 
Venice this very year, through the kindness of the 
Chevalier Stefani, a curious portrait of the famous 



Grand Canal, with Cavalli Palace and Church 
della Salute 



■?^-' •-)/ 



= --M 




VENETIAN LIFE— THE CAKNIVAL. 403 

adventurer, Casanova of Seingalt, and here, at the 
gate of the famous Leads and Wells of Venice^ is the 
place to mention him. If the traveller asks to see 
these celebrated dungeons, — made more celebrated 
and more terrible still by the account Casanova has 
given of his escape, by Victor Hugo in his Angela^ 
Tyran de Padoue^ by Cooper in the Bravo, and by 
many poets and romance writers — he will certainly be 
disappointed. The Leads owe their name to the 
fact that the timber work of the roof of the Ducal 
Palace is covered over with sheets of lead instead of 
with tiles. There are the garrets of the Palace, 
which have been divided into cells and formed the 
principal prisons. You pass into them on leaving 
the chamber of the Bussolaj without leaving either 
the passage or the story you are in ; a door indicates 
the narrow staircase leading to them. In this space, 
between the last chambers and the torture-chamber, 
had been made a dozen cells where all the State 
prisoners were shut up ; but the partitions which 
formed them having been knocked down to make 
room for a depository of State papers, since arranged 
at the Frari, the Leads are now suppressed. The 
keeper who has a little reading, or the cicerone with 
a slight idea of history, will conscientiously show you 
the window from which the famous Casanova made 
his escape. It is the last window on the side next 
the Bridge of Sighs. The escape was much dis- 
puted ; it is true nevertheless, and Casanova has 



404 VENICE. 

accurately described it in a pamphlet called Ilistoire 
de mafuite des prisons de la Eej)ubllque de Venise, 
qu'on appelle les plonibs, ecrite a Dux, en Bolieme^ 
Van 1787, cliez le noble de Schoenfeldt With the 
imagination excited by this name of Casanova, one 
has difficulty, on inspection of the portrait referred 
to, in finding the brilliant adventurer in the features 
of this refined old man with a faded and ascetic face. 
As for the Wells, not less famous than the Leads, 
they are reached by the open gallery on to which the 
Giants' Staircase leads ; there a door in the wall 
gives entrance to a dark staircase, which is used 
for the service of the upper stories ; its purpose was 
to lead from the prison to the chamber of the State 
Inquisitors. It is a mistake to suppose that the dun- 
geons called the Wells were below the level of the 
lagoon ; this was impossible, as nothing could have 
preserved them from the infiltration of the water. 
The Wells look out upon the canal spanned by the 
beautiful arch of the Bridge of Sighs. The truth is 
that these dungeons were preserved from the damp 
by a lining of boards on all their sides, and that they 
were lighted by loop-holes looking upon the canal. 
There are in reality two lower stories of prisons, 
and the second story of the two, as you go down, is 
scarcely on a level with the court of the Ducal 
Palace. It is in the last of these two dungeons one 
finds the inscriptions traced by the prisoners, the 
most famous of which is : 



VENETIAN LIFE— THE CARNIVAL. 405 

De chi mi fido guardami Iddio ; 
De chi non mi fido guardero io. 

'^ May God defend me from him I trust ; from him I 
distrust, I will defend myself. '^ Casanova was not 
in the Wells, but in the Leads, which explains the 
possibility of his escape. The famous Carmagnola 
occupied the very last dungeon in the lower story. 

Here we are on the Eiva. If I were always in 
Venice, this is where I should like to live, and yet 
no one lives here : there is not a single palace from 
the Ponte della Paglia and the Ducal Palace to the 
Garden Point. There are nothing but hotels, of- 
fices, little shops, and as after the Piazza the Riva 
is the only open place of some size, the people re- 
sort for amusement to this most picturesque and 
attractive spot. 

It is the great faQade of Venice ; the spectacle is 
always there and always renewing itself. What 
types, what variety of character ! The gondolier 
cries ^^alla Barca!'' and invites you to go to the Lido ; 
the sailors of Chioggia with their picturesque over- 
coats, solemn as doges, look where the wind comes 
from, waiting for the propitious moment to weigh 
anchor ; their fleet of red and brown sails, bright 
enough to suit the most enthusiastic colorist, cross 
and recross before the Garden Point, the nets and 
tackle hanging from the masts to dry in the sun, and 
present the most seductive sight for a painter. We 
find in Admiral Acton's album two excellent sketches 



406 VENICE. 

from nature which render well the impression of this 
fleet of fishing boats ; these accessories of Venetian 
nature are such as cannot be invented, and you must 
know your Venice well to render faithfully their 
splendid coloring and the intense and powerful tones. 
The Admiral, who has the eye of a painter, excels 
in broad and rapid water-color, and these subjects 
attract him. 

M. Liardo, in a spirited drawing of the Riva, has 
seized to the life all that many-colored and moving 
crowd shouting in the sun : ^' Acqua Fresca ! Semi ! 
Semi ! Mele ! Mele ! Passa tempi V^ V\^hat a num- 
ber of different cries, and what strange trades^ from 
the apple-seller to the open-air conjuror, the juggler, 
the seller of shells and miniature gondolas, the con- 
fectioner, the seller of preserved fruits, the sharper 
who offers a lottery ticket •, I know not what more ! 
/ — And what life, what light, what variety for the 
eye ! Above all what an horizon — San Giorgio, the 
Lido, the great Indiamen sailing majestically in, the 
heavy steamers that pass slowly and not without 
dignity in front of the Campanile of San Giorgio. 
And the little Madonna of the Lagoon, a simple 
altar standing at the corner of the quay, and before 
our windows in the Hotel d'Angleterre, the ancient 
Casa Laguna, a congenial lodging at which we have 
been in the habit of staying for some years. 

If we follow on still to the right after having 
passed the Ponte Ca di Dio^ we come to a swing- 



VENETIAN LIFE— THE CARNIVAL. 407 

bridge, and on the left appears the singular facade 
of the Arsenal, one of the best known buildings of 
Venice from its strange and unusual appearance. 
We have already described its constitution, its ob- 
ject, and the enormous part it played in the estab- 
lishment of the Republic ; all is changed now^ but 
when one has lived as we have lived^ in the study 
of the history of this great city, it is easy to picture 
to oneself what a noble spectacle the Arsenal must 
have presented at the moment of going to war with 
the Turk. During our last visit, we were allowed 
to make some sketches in the interior ; that of the 
great docks and of the Isoletto gives a view of the sheds 
for the ancient galleys and the tower used for fixing 
masts, lastly the Darsa nuovissima, from whence you 
can see the quarter '^ delle Celestie '^ framed by the 
lines of the arcades and the wide roofing. 

At Venice you must lose yourself, and wander about 
the streets and across the bridges without pause and 
without plan, planting yourself wherever the view at- 
tracts you, not hesitating to cross the threshold of pal- 
aces and to enter in if you want to make discoveries. 
What noble and delightful courts, what breadth of 
style, and peculiarity of character and plan ! — at the 
Campo San Polo for instance, the little court of the 
house of Goldoni, the Scala Antica, and the Palazzo 
dei Mori, with a charming court that seems made to 
entice the sketcher in water-color. We went into 
it one day to draw the well^ one of the most charac- 



408 VENICE. 

teristic in Venice. The farther you go the greater 
the interest becomes^ as you get out of the well-known 
and commonplace parts of Venice. We find an 
artistic attraction in a porch of good style at the 
Ponte di Sacca ; at the Zattere, all painters know 
the court of the Calcina^ a charming restaurant fre- 
quented by artists. 

Lastly, outside of official Venice, what things to 
be seen ! Even after all I have written here, how 
much more remains to be said ! Whether we would 
follow some peculiar type that is passing, or idle in 
the little streets looking at the view, or plunge into 
those noisy^ busy, animated places near the Rialto 
where the people jostle and press, nothing can be 
more seductive, and everything is new and fresh. 
To watch the passers-by, old women wrapped up in 
their brown shawls, or those bright, elegant Vene- 
tian girls with their well-set figures, poor but con- 
tented, walking away down the street independently, 
or chatting under doorways and laughing heartily. 
Jt is quite a study to recognize in these different 
types the four or five different races to which the 
whole population can be reduced. Let us look at a 
group of five portraits of Venetian girls which the 
painter Stella has drawn, — portraits which may serve 
as types ; among these bright and attractive coun- 
tenances we notice a model whom a Bellini, trans- 
figuring her with his sweet and gentle grace, would 
have converted into an immortal Virgin. She is a 



VENETIAN LIFE— TYPES OF THE PEOPLE. 409 

simple washerwoman of San Giacomo delP Orio^ 
who only needed to be draped in the first veil that 
came to hand to make a Madonna of her^ while the 
brunette beneath her in the group, the Lavaratrice 
nelle vele of Canareggio, with her twisted hair and 
tortoise-shell dagger in her chignon, will never pass 
for an angel. The Sartorella of Dorso Duro^ the 
Tabacchina of Santa Croce, and a pretty waiter-girl 
of San MarcO; complete the charming specimens of 
these young girls of the people whom we see pass- 
ing in the street. If they pass before a traghetto, 
all the Beppos call them and the la^^i begin. These 
merry stalwart gondoliers, waiting under the trellis 
for customers, are gallant, and graceful in their gal- 
lantries. They are there in their open-air clubs re- 
lating the gossip of the town ; for two centimes they 
take you across from one side to the other, to save 
going round by the bridges, and in this Heaven- 
favored country the poor always cross for nothing. 
The gondola, too, is one of the great charms of 
Venice : it alone, without art, without the genius of 
artists which arrests one at every step, would be 
enough to fascinate the stranger. In that gentle 
swinging, like the swinging of a hammock, that light 
plash of the oar which caresses the ear, that incred- 
ible sensibility of the boat itself, which seems to 
move like a living being, — in these and in the sur- 
rounding silence there is from the first moment a 
charm which no one can escape. 



410 VENICE. 

At the hour of which Victor Hugo speaks in the 
Captive^ 

Alors que, pale et blonde, 
La lune ouvre dans Fonde 
Son eventail d'argent, 

there is no other sensation like that of being cradled 
softly on that mirror shimmering in the calmness of 
a night which the song of the gondolier alone 
disturbs. 

Embark at the Piazzetta at eleven o'clock on a 
clear sweet starlight evening, and tell the gondolier 
to go into the canal of the Giudecca. The gondola 
enters on the golden track, you have left the Custom- 
house on your right. The stars touch with light the 
gold ball which carries Fortune on it^ and the lamp 
at the foot of the portico, the steps of which run 
down into the water, lights up the white fagade and 
makes it reflect itself in the slightly rippled waters. 
The faubourg of the Giudecca is on our left — a red- 
brown by daylight and dark by night ; a few scat- 
tered lanterns alone break this black ground, like 
the gold sparkles which appear and disappear on a 
piece of burning paper, and sometimes, under the 
stars, as in the picture of the English painter Or- 
chardsouj two lovers exchange their soft vows '' in 
the pale light of the stars '^ under the brightly 
spangled sky. 

The Giudecca is long and low, and becomes faint 
and almost bluish as it prolongs itself toward the 



VENETIAN LIFE— TYPES OF THE PEOPLE. 411 

horizon. The black keels of some boats at anchor, 
their masts and fine cordage, outline themselves 
distinctly against the clear sky ; the dome of the 
Redentore, the church of the faubourg, rounds 
itself above the houses. On the right we have the 
Zattere and their quays with polished flagstones, 
looking white in the rays of the moon, with the 
great palaces, regular and noble, the little deserted 
jetties, and here and there the bridges at the open- 
ings of the canals. 

The Giudecca is dark ; the Zattere are as light as 
day, but with that veiled illumination which the 
moon throws over everything it floods with its rays. 
The silence is profound and the calmness undis- 
turbed ; the distant echoes, the solemn striking 
of the hour by the clock of St. Mark's, the song 
of a solitary sailor guarding his felucca which he 
has brought timber-laden from Dalmatia, the voice 
of a belated gondolier who sits swinging his legs in 
that nocturnal revery which is like the hief oi the 
East : who can render this impression at once sweet 
and solemn, the incomparable charm which lulls all 
longing, and attaches us to Venice with an imper- 
ishable love ? 

The skill of the gondoliers is perfectly marvellous, 
and the visitor can have no better proof of this than 
by being present at the emptying of the Fenice on 
an opera night. It is curious to notice the usages, 
habits, and rules that they have among themselves. 



412 VENICE. 

At the turning of these narrow canals^ where they 
could be taken by surprise and cut in two by the 
prow of a gondola coming in the other direction^ 
they have a cry which they give mechanically, 
and w^hich at a distance and long before the 
turning warns the comrade who may be coming 
the other way ; accidents in fact are more than 
rare. 

It is said that the piece of iron at the prow, in 
the shape of the handle of a violin, is no longer 
made ; old prows are polished and fitted to new 
gondolas. A curious detail is that if one wants to 
carry away as a remembrance one of those prettily- 
formed and picturesque lanterns w^hich the gondo- 
liers hold in their hands, more to facilitate the get- 
ting in and out of passengers than to light them on 
their way, it is very difficult to procure them. This 
getting in and out is indeed a rather delicate opera- 
tion, when the pretty Venetian ladies come out of 
the palaces in their satin shoes, muffled up in their 
opera cloaks. These lanterns, to which we gladly 
return because they are much sought after by 
Parisians, are generally large and heavy ; they 
are of hammered brass ; those belonging to the 
great houses, often highly ornamented with niello, 
are gilt ; some of them are very beautiful curiosities, 
worthy to be put in a collection. They are trans- 
mitted as heirlooms ; the finest are of the eighteenth 
century ; those of earlier date are more scarce, the 



VENETIAN LIFE— TYPES OF THE PEOPLE. 413 

curiosity-venders of Venice, the most famous brokers 
in the world, have laid violent hands on all that 
were for sale. It is needless to say that those 
still remaining in the great families do not leave 
them. 



CHAPTER XX. 

CHUECHES— THE LIDO— THE ISLE SAN LAZZAKO— 
THE AEMENIANS -CONCLUSION. 

In the eighteenth century, Venice could still 
number a hundred churches in which mass was 
celebrated, and the statistics of that time show that 
there was a priest to every fifty-four inhabitants. 
Things are much changed since then ; scarcely more 
than fifty-nine churches are now to be counted, — 
among which some, however, are of the greatest 
possible interest, as much for the treasures they 
contain as for their architecture. We have of 
course mentioned the majority of these, inasmuch 
as architecture forms the subject of a large part of 
our work ; we shall here, therefore, delay only to 
speak of four churches. 

San Zaccaria stands close to the Riva ; it is 
reached on this side by a small doorway opening 
opposite San Giorgio Maggiore. This is a church 
of very beautiful style ; the fa§ade and interior are 
attributed to one of the Lombardi ; we have already 
characterized the details which make this building 
one of the most interesting in Venice. San 
Zaccaria plays an important part in all the cere- 

414 



CHUECHES. 415 

monies of the Republic; the pictures of Guardi and 
Canaletto represent the processions winding along 
the Piazza in front of the church, and the convent 
which used to be connected with it and is now con- 
verted into barracks was one of the richest and 
most ancient in Venice. The Piazza is famous from 
a dramatic incident. The Doge Pietro Gradenigo 
was assassinated there one day when he came to be 
present at the annual feast of the saint to whom the 
church is dedicated. There too lies Alessandro 
Vittoria, the great sculptor and last great artist of 
the sixteenth century. The church is very rich in 
paintings, and possesses a Giovanni Bellini of the 
highest importance amongst the works of that 
master. 

San Giorgio Maggiore is by the famous Andrea 
Palladio (1566) ; and Scamozzi was charged with 
its completion. This is a classical church, of a 
grand and noble design, but a little cold in effect. 
The majority of Venetian churches are pantheons ; 
several Doges are buried in this one : Leonardo 
Dona, Lorenzo Veniero, and there is a retrospective 
monument erected in 1637 to the famous Michieli, 
the Doge of the Crusades. There is a legend about 
this island of San Giorgio Maggiore : it is said that 
it was inhabited by Benedictines in other days ; the 
Doge Ziani is related to have seen his own son die 
there, torn by wild dogs before his eyes, and there- 
upon to have had the primitive church destroyed. 



416 VENICE. 

To redeem this impulse of anger and despair, he 
had a residence built for him in the island itself; 
and later, as the chapel of this residence threatened 
to fall into ruin, Palladio is supposed to have been 
commissioned to build the present church and 
convent. 

We have spoken at length of the churches of the 
Frari and of San Giovanni e Paolo. The interior 
of that vast pantheon of the Frari, one of the 
grandest buildings in Venice, containing the tombs 
of the most illustrious persons, from artists to doges 
and condottieri, shows the visitor the most splendid 
specimens of that sepulchral architecture for which 
Venice is specially renowned. The church itself 
dates from 1250 ; in it the Gothic style is blended 
with that of the Renaissance ; succeeding genera- 
tions have also left traces of their passage. Among 
the sepulchral monuments in the Frari may be men- 
tioned that of Canova, and the pendant containing 
the remains of the prince of painters, and painter 
of princes, the great Titian. 

FESTIVAL OF THE REDENTOEE. 
The church of the Redentore, which stands on 
the island of the Giudecca and was built by Palladio 
in fulfilment of a vow made by the Venetians at the 
time of the plague in 1575 which robbed Venice 
of forty thousand inhabitants, has been the object 
of a pious pilgrimage on the day of the Sagra every 



Monument of Canova in the Church de^ Frari 



CHUKCHES. 417 

year since Its opening. The Doge and all the 
Signory used to be present, and from every quarter 
of Venice J from the islands of the lagoon to Chi- 
oggia, all the fishermen came in crowds to pay their 
devotions at the Redentore. 

To facilitate communication between the town 
and the Giudecca, separated as we know them to 
be by a broad canal^ a large bridge of boats used 
to be and is still constructed, on that day^ to unite 
the Zattere to that tongue of land which used at 
one time to be called ^' Punta Lunga'' on account 
of its form. 

Little by little, year by year, the first object of 
the foundation was forgotten ; if there was still 
question of returning thanks to Heaven and hear- 
ing a solemn mass, question of vows or of the 
plague there was none ; people came from far, and 
it was but natural that they should amuse and 
refresh themselves ; booths in the open air were 
established ; but the Doge and the Signory were 
no longer there to keep up the solemn character 
of the ceremony. In short, the Sagra became a 
fair, and this fair still exists. I have been present 
at it and found myself much reminded (the horizons 
excepted) of the open-air fetes held in the suburbs 
of Paris. The frittole play an important part ; 
cooking-stoves smoke in the open air, spreadmg 
strong odors abroad ; improvised dressers exhibit 
those large shining copper dishes which we call 

21 



418 VENICE. 

dinanderies and which among the sellers of frittura 
in Venice are very numerous and very fine. There 
is a special sale of mulberries, which are then in 
season, and the peasants from the mainland erect 
their little garlanded booths on the piazza, and the 
people stain their faces with the bacchanalian- 
colored juice of the fruit. Deep draughts are 
taken of ConeglianOj Chianti, and all the native 
wines ; the fun is great, people go from booth to 
booth, from theatre to theatre ; musicians, blind 
folk, charlatans, improvise concerts and representa- 
tions ; the crowd is immense, the movement per- 
petual, and really for a stranger it is a great piece 
of good luck to find himself in Venice at such a 
time. When night is come, all the open-air booths 
adorn themselves with little colored lanterns, and 
the flow of comers and goers is incessant. This 
Venetian crowd moreover is gentle and peaceable, 
and the impression made on the traveller of the 
sweetness of the Venetian character is always true 
and deep ; I have often recurred to this impression, 
for the reason that in it lies the source of the 
sympathy which is engendered by a sojourn in this 
city. 

Some years ago the upper classes used to frequent 
the Sagra, coming in parties with their gondolas ; a 
cold supper was brought on board, and a gondola 
with musicians followed behind ; this is disappearing 
like all the old customs ; but people still sup under 



CHURCHES. 419 

the starlight^ and it is not rare to see gondolas 
gliding about on the canal, provided with a striped 
awning, and adorned with colored lamps, while with- 
in persons feast at their ease. The common people, 
however, make no such ado, they sup under trellised 
vines, or seat themselves alia buona^ in a corner, and 
the merriment is none the less frank. Sometimes I 
have seen the fete more animated than at others, 
according to the season and circumstances, and it 
often takes quite the air of a carnival ; the illumina- 
tions are sometimes brilliant, explosions are heard, 
the canal is lighted up with the reflections of the 
Bengal lights set aflame by the gondoliers, who place 
themselves in the front of the boat and throw powder 
into a kind of tripod arranged for the purpose ; the 
liquid level is furrowed with traffic like Paris boule- 
vards on the return from the races ; and there is a 
come-and-go, a movement, a concert of songs, cries, 
and repartees, which bespeak an enjoyment without 
afterthought. In reality it is but a promenade with 
the Sagra for pretext ; nothing is done but to go up 
and down on the scene of the/efe, with no very defi- 
nite object except that of being amused without any 
speciar spectacle ; and it is the concourse of the 
people itself which constitutes the fun^ione. 

It is not necessary to say that, profane as is the 
wind-up of this religious festival, it is still a piece 
of good fortune to the church : all who wish can be 
served with pure water from a particular fountain in 



420 VENICE. 

the interior of the convent^ water endowed with some 
virtue, no doubt, to judge by the avidity with which 
the good people of the mainland swallow it. The 
relics of saints are shown also in the sacristy from 
behind an iron grating. We did not wait for the 
opportunity of the Sagra to visit the Redentore : it 
is, perhaps, from a certain point of view, Palladio's 
masterpiece for nobility of proportion. The high 
altar has been overladen with ornament in too 
rococo a style ; it is a curious example of late 
eighteenth-century art, and is in strong contrast 
with the noble simplicity of this beautiful building. 

THE LIDO AND THE ISLES. 

However well acquainted we are with things 
Venetian, we shall never quite understand what se- 
cret fibres vibrate in the pure Venetian to this name 
of Lido, which seems to awaken in him the idea of 
pleasure, of charm, and a whole world of associa- 
tions and sensations. Is it the contrast between a 
town of stone and a garden ? It is the view of the 
Adriatic ? Is it simply a factitious reputation ac- 
quired from Gozzi, Goldoni, Byron, from all romance 
writers and poets and rhymesters 1 Or, last of all, 
is it a tradition of the festivities of olden times, or 
has the Lido changed its aspect and do we see it 
now under a less seductive light than it once 
reflected ? 

However that may be, the Lido is in reality a low 



THE LIDO AND THE ISLES. 421 

tongue of land with one shore toward the lagoon 
and the other to the Adriatic^ a flat piece of almost 
marshy ground, with large vegetable gardens inter- 
sected here and there by little canals ; and all this 
stirs in the stranger a purely literary association, for 
the feeling is awakened not by the sight of the place 
itself but by the memories created in connection 
with it by poets. Byron wished to be buried there, 
and no doubt found a poetry in the place which filled 
his heart. What we ordinary men go there for es- 
pecially is to look at and plunge into the sea. A 
bathing establishment has been set up of late years 
on the barren beach ; this has been very successful ; 
and in the course of time may probably make a for- 
tune for the town of Venice. 

The only part of the Lido which is accessible for 
walking extends from San Andrea toward San 
Nicolo ; the popular fStes are held within the actual 
enclosure of the esplanades of the fort. The first 
Monday in September a hacchanale is celebrated ; 
this is an antique name applied to what is the most 
modern of amusements. It is the Sagra again, on 
other ground and without the religious motive ; the 
general paraphernalia of the festival are the same — 
strolling players, clowns, punches, frittole as usual ; 
for there cannot be a good holiday at Venice without 
fried fish, without singers male and female, without 
musical brotherhoods and societies, kindly folk, who 
come for the occasion from far and near. 



422 VENICE. 

In spring, if you walk from the baths in the di- 
rection of San Nicolo, you pass between two green 
hedges which are not without charm, and before 
arriving at the village which lies at the point facing 
San Andrea a flat and desolate region must be 
crossed ; this is an ancient Jewish burial-ground, 
and you still perceive tombstones here and there, 
some of them bearing Hebrew inscriptions, under 
the brambles and among the plants and grass. 
Past the cemetery is the church, and the immense 
barrack into which an ancient convent has been 
converted. San Nicolo is separated from this by a 
little canal, spanned by a bridge, in the arch of 
which the Eiva of Venice frames itself most pic- 
turesquely. 

If just now we throw some doubt upon the attrac- 
tion the mere natural features of the Lido, apart 
from the charms of association, might possess for the 
stranger, let us add that we ourselves are fully awake 
to its spell, as we instinctively re-people in imagina- 
tion that deserted ground. It was here that Henry 
III. landed, and the triumphal arches were erected, 
decorated by the great artists of the greatest epoch 
of Venice ; there, at the point ending at the Castle, 
was wont to issue the Bucentaur ! And who knows 
whether in the depths of the sea, covered with sacri- 
legious rust, the marriage rings of the Doges — two 
hundred and seventy-six rings thrown in from 1520 
to 1796 — are not still tossed to and fro among sand 



THE LIDO AND THE ISLES. 423 

and sea-weed with the movement of the Adriatic 
waves ? 

THE ISLANDS— A VILLA ON THE MAINLAND. 

Twenty-five islands scattered over the lagoon 
compose the Venetian archipelago^ some stretching 
in the direction of the mainland^ others lying in the 
open, so that it takes some hours to reach them from 
the city. 

San Michele is now used as the cemetery of 
Venice, and this island has been joined to its neigh- 
bor^ San Cristoforo della Pace. It takes scarcely a 
quarter of an hour to reach it by gondola from the 
Arsenalj and is the first halting-place on the excur- 
sion to Murano. A fifteenth-century convent, built 
by Tagliapietri and bereft of its monks, still exists 
at the extremity of the island. You go to see in the 
cemetery the tomb of Leopold Robert, the painter 
of the ^^ Moissonneurs '^ and the '^Pecheurs de 
PAdriatique,'' whose suicide caused such a profound 
sensation in the world of art. 

We have devoted a whole chapter to Murano. 
One can almost dispense with seeing Burano, for the 
island has no special character ; the women make 
lace, and the men are all fishers. The canal which 
traverses the island is large enough to make believe 
that it is a small port. A tower is seen there which 
dates from the earliest times of the Republic. 

Torcello^ already often referred to^ is one of the 



424 VENICE. 

first Islands In which the Venetians took refuge : 
nature allies Itself happily with art, and the island 
Is as picturesque as It is singular ; the visitor must 
not omit seeing the Duomo and the church of Santa 
Fosca. 

San Francesco del Deserto has nothing left but an 
old deserted cloister^ and some large trees of fine 
outline which give a character to the Island. It is 
supposed In old days to have been to the Venetians, 
when they sought a favorable field for settling their 
disputes, what the Pre mix Clercs was to Paris. On 
the enclosure wall of the convent garden an edict, 
surmounted by a winged lion of St. Mark let Into 
the stone, reminds those whom it may concern^ in 
the name of the Council of Ten, that It Is forbidden 
to blaspheme at games of hazard. These shoreward 
Islands are especially to be admired ; they are almost 
all picturesque, but rather In their general aspect 
than in detail. 

After the Lido, of which we have just spoken, we 
have still to see Malamocco, Chioggia, and Brondolo, 
with the MurazzI : but this Is a much longer ex- 
cursion. A steamboat starts daily from the Riva, 
and plies between Chioggia and Venice, and this 
gives one a good opportunity of realizing the pro- 
digious effort made in the fourteenth century by the 
Genoese and Venetians during their great war — the 
former to make themselves masters of Chioggia by 
forcing the passages, the latter by chasing these 



THE LIDO AND THE ISLES. 425 

from the lagoon, where they had gained a strong 
position, establishing their communications with 
the mainland by the bridge which unites it to 
Chioggia. 

After these excursions to the islands the traveller 
can Avander also on the mainland, and visit the fa- 
mous old villas which were dependent on the Re- 
public and subject to its laws. The Villa Masere, 
or Villa Manin, or Villa Barbaro — for all three 
names are given to it — had been to the present 
writer the occasion of prolonged studies and the 
subject of a work entitled La Vie d'un Patricien de 
Venise an sei^ieme Steele, It is a unique specimen of 
those beautiful villas in which the nobles of Venice 
took refuge from the heats of summer. You reach 
it after three or four hours' journey, by way of 
Treviso and Asolo. Besides the charm of the 
journey through the rich country with splendid 
views, you find on arriving at the door not only the 
friendly countenance of your host Signer Giacomelli, 
the fortunate possessor, but a brilliant display of the 
genius of three of the greatest artists of the Renais- 
sance — Palladio, Paola Veronese, and Alessandro 
Vittoria — who joined their forces to build and adorn 
this house of the brothers Barbaro : Daniele, Patri- 
arch of Aquileria, and Marcantonio, Procurator of 
St. Mark's and Ambassador of the Most Serene 
Republic. 



426 VENICE. 

THE AEMENIANS. 

San Lazzaro is the smallest and the nearest to 
Venice of all the islands in the lagoon ; it is reached 
by gondola in three-quarters of an hour. It was at 
first inhabited by poor fishermen^ and in the twelfth 
century served as a refuge for the lepers who came 
from the East, w^hence its name of San Lazzaro, 
which it has kept to the present time. When 
leprosy had entirely disappeared from Venice, the 
island of San Lazzaro was deserted, and in 1715 the 
Republic handed it over to the Armenian monks 
whom Mekhitar had brought with him from the 
Morea in his flight before the formidable Turkish 
invasion which robbed the Venetians of their pos- 
sessions on the Greek continent. From the begin- 
ning of the eighteenth century San Lazzaro has been 
permanently inhabited by the Mekhitarist congrega- 
tion; there the community has formed itself, has been 
developed by the successors of the founder, and has 
acquired the influence and celebrity it now enjoys. 

From the traghetto of the Piazzetta the traveller 
embarks in the gondola which will convey him by 
the Orfano Canal to the convent of San Lazzaro. 
He passes close to the monastery of San Servolo 
and the old lazaretto, without losing sight of Venice, 
the Lido, and the long chain of the Julian Alps 
w^hose snow-covered summits lose themselves in the 
azure sky. As soon as the steel spur of the gondola 



SAN LAZZAKO. 427 

touches the steps, the door of the monastery opens, 
and the visitor is introduced into a hall adorned 
with flowers and evergreens. One of the fathers 
of the monastery, dressed in a long flowing black 
robe, bids the traveller welcome and receives him 
with that delightful courtesy which reminds one of 
Eastern hospitality. 

All parts of the monastery are shown to the 
visitor ; first the library, which contains thirty 
thousand printed volumes, two thousand Armenian 
MSS., a few of which are very ancient, also a 
museum of antiquities and coins. Leaving the 
library, you pass on to the refectory, which is 
decorated with a picture of the Last Supper by 
Novelli. Then comes the church, of a tame Gothic. 
Here, under the flags of this building, are buried 
the founder and his successors, the Archbishops 
of Siounic. The church is of the simplest style, 
and is not in any way like the sumptuous religious 
buildings which the piety of the Venetians raised 
during the Middle Ages in the islets of the Adriatic. 
The visitor is then introduced to the printing and 
reading rooms, where several of the brothers are at 
work under the direction of one of the fathers of 
the monastery. 

Here the visitor can take up those editions which 
bear comparison with the richest works of European 
printers and through which the monastery gained 
the prize medals at the Paris, London, and Florence 



428 VENICE. 

Exhibitions. The traveller always buys some gem 
of typography, a prayer or the like printed in thirty- 
three different languages each in its proper charac- 
ters. But the objects most especially interesting 
are the first editions of the Armenian classics, the 
translations of the masterpieces of modern European 
literature, among which are the tragedies of Cor- 
neille and Racine, the poetry of Byron and Goethe, 
the works of Chateaubriand and Bossuet, and many 
other writings which bring the lights of the Western 
world to the East. 

The monastery of San Lazzaro is not in any 
respect like the other monasteries of Italy ; it is a 
veritable phalanstery of the Benedictines, and has 
been in fact, since its foundation in the last century, 
a regular national academy, where all work together 
without ceasing at the object tlie founder of the 
order proposed to himself, — that is to say, at the 
propagation of Western culture among the Armeni- 
ans dispersed throughout the whole of Asia, and in 
Africa, Europe, and even America. The work of 
the Mekhitarist community is then a national work, 
and is so far highly meritorious ; the Armenians, 
too, look with justice upon the island of San Lazzaro 
as the torch which shall one day illuminate Armenia, 
when the hour comes for her to live again in history 
and to take her place once more among free nations. 

The Mekhitarist congregation is composed of 
about sixty members, placed under the authority of 



SAN LAZZAKO. 429 

a Principal who has the title of Archbishop of 
Siounic. This prelate is assisted by a council of six 
members forming the Chapter. The brothers are all 
either charged with responsible duties within the es- 
tablishment or else with foreign missions. Those 
who live in the monastery have the direction of the 
school intended to recruit the novices^ while others 
compose and translate educational, scientific, or re- 
ligious works for the use of their fellow-countrymen. 
It is these books which, distributed in great numbers 
in all the Armenian centres of population, keep alive 
reverence and faith among the people and develop 
within them a spirit of nationality and patriotism. 

Not content with distributing every year among 
their fellow-countrymen in the East the useful books 
which come from their printing-presses, the Mekhitar- 
ists have understood the necessity of devoting them- 
selves also ta the education of the young, and with 
this view have founded two colleges by the help of 
considerable legacies which have been made to them 
by several of their fellow-countrymen who had en- 
riched themselves in commerce. One of these col- 
leges is established in Venice, the other in Paris ; 
every year fifty pupils are brought up in these es- 
tablishments, under the direction of brothers of the 
monastery assisted by French professors. It has 
been affirmed that the European training the pupils 
receive in these colleges has produced the most 
fruitful results. Many among them on returning to 



430 VENICE. 

their own country have entered the service of the 
Turkish^ Persian, and Russian governments^ and 
some have raised themselves to the highest positions 
in the army, the civil engineers, and in finance, 
showing great superiority from their thorough 
education. 

If the visitor has the good fortune to find himself 
at San Lazzaro on a high festival, he can be present 
at the solemn mass performed by the Principal, and 
can then judge of the imposing grandeur of a re- 
ligious ceremony celebrated according to the Ar- 
menian ritual. Nothing is more fitted to strike the 
stranger than a ceremonial of this kind, when the 
pontiff and his clergy, clothed in their sacerdotal 
vestments, intone the sacred chants preserved for 
centuries by the national tradition. The robes worn 
by the Archbishop and clergy are of the richest ma- 
terials and most delicate colors, enriched with em- 
broideries, pearls, and silk, the work of the Arme- 
nian ladies of Constantinople and Smyrna. 

Imagine these personages on the steps of the altar 
surrounding the celebrant, who disappears in a cloud 
of myrrh and incense. The costume of the Arch- 
bishop consists of a pontifical robe, hidden under 
the large folds of a Byzantine dalmatic, resembling 
those worn by the Emperor of Constantinople in 
church paintings and mosaics and in the miniatures 
of Greek MSS. He wears the mitre ornamented with 
the emblematic triangle, on the ground of which 



SAN LAZZAKO. 431 

stands out the mystic eye of the Deity. He holds 
in his hand the episcopal staff, the symbol of his 
dignity. 

The second personage is the Vartalud Ananias, 
Vicar-General of the monastery. He wears the 
dress of the Armenian doctors ; the Greek cap on 
his head ; he holds the doctoral staff, of which the 
top is in the form of two serpents. 

Then follows the Archdeacon dressed in the alb, 
wearing the stole and the sacerdotal cap ; his func- 
tion during the service is to hold the censer. The 
effect of all this is extremely grand. The Deacon 
also wears the alb and stole as a scarf; it is his duty 
to hold the gospel to be kissed by the clergy and 
assistants. The Sub-deacon wears the alb ; the 
stole rests only on his left arm; during the cere- 
mony he swings a metal instrument (kechoth, in 
Latin flahellum) which is in the shape of a disk or- 
namented in the centre with the head of a winged 
angel. 

Eight acolytes, dressed in long albs, carry the 
insignia of the archi-episcopal office, the mitre and 
pallium ; others hold the cross, the Latin cross, the 
doctoral staff, and the staff surmounted with tlie 
globe and cross, the badge of the diocese of Siounic, 
of which the Principals of the Mekhitarists are the 
titularies. 

The Archbishop of Siounic, Principal of the 
Mekhitarist congregation, was^ at the time of our 



432 VENICE. 

last visit, Monsignor George Hurmuz, fourth succes- 
sor of Mekhitar, the founder of the order. The 
Archbishop was a fine, noble-looking old man, with 
a black beard streaked with silver, whose refined 
and intelligent head recalled some speaking portrait 
of Eembrandt. 

The scene enjoyed in returning from this excur- 
sion adds much to its charm ; as it is generally at 
sunset that one re-enters Venice, the city is all 
ablaze with purple and gold, the radiance of the 
descending orb ; the lagoon is a pearly gray studded 
with the black points of the piles, and all the cam- 
paniles, domes and warehouses along the bank seem 
crowned with halos of gold. 

These are the spectacles — these, and such as are 
presented to us by everyday life — which, after a long 
sojourn in Venice, end by engrossing our interest 
above all others : as though man soon tired of the 
works of men, and kept his appetite and desire 
always keen, always alive for the works of God 
only, for nature and for life. In truth, however 
passionate a man may be for the things of art, he 
is soon surfeited in so colossal a museum as is the 
city of Venice ; he comes at last to the pass of look- 
ing at Tintoret without attention, he stands before 
a Giovanni Bellini without emotion ; masterpiece 
crowds upon masterpiece, Titian on Carpaccio, 
Pordenone on Palma ; bronzes, enamels, triptychs, 
marbles, figures of doges lying on their biers, 



SAN LAZZARO. 433 

famous condottieri buried in their armor and stand- 
ing proud and valorous in the garb of war upon 
their sepulchres, — all these sights and glories leave 
us indifferent. I remember the courteous keeper 
of the museum making me touch with my finger, in 
his own private room, a marvellous Veronese which 
he was engaged in restoring, so that I could follow 
the method of the great painter on the canvas^ and 
yet not feeling moved. I can recall having handled 
without surprise an autograph letter of Galileo to 
the Inquisition, and read without interest, like a 
weary sight-seer, the signature of Lucrezia Borgia 
at the foot of another document. The truth is, the 
air of Venice, the sky and its varying moods, the 
extraordinary coloring which the atmosphere throws 
over everything, offer a charm which surpasses all 
other; and the open air^ the lagoon, the life of the 
port, with the changing aspect of the pearly waves, 
that glimmering surface which Guardi has so well 
rendered, the trembling light upon the silvery field 
all barred by tongues of sand and dotted by the 
black points of the piles, are beyond the highest 
inspirations of man. 

To sit in front of a cafe on the Eiva, Avith no 
other object but that of looking before you, is a keen 
pleasure for anyone who has the love of the pic- 
turesque. The incessant movement ; the never 
ungentle pranks of the motley crowd ; those singular 
colloquies of which the meaning unfortunately 

28 



434 VENICE. 

escapes the ear unfamiliar with the Venetian 
dialect ; the coloring, the sunshine ; the changing 
effects, the seductive distances ; the constant arrivals 
of great ships, the entrance or departure of the 
Chioggiotes, or the Greeks of Zante or sailors of 
the Sporades, with their ruddy sails making blots of 
color on the lagoon, and, when stretched like a bow 
by the wind, showing in the transparent air the 
great Virgin rudely painted on their surface ; the 
caravans of strangers that pass, with the special 
character peculiar to each nationality, — methodical 
Englishmen, — American ladies with their beautiful 
hair, — southern Italians high-colored and vehement, 
— blond Germans in spectacles, — quick Frenchmen 
running with their noses in the air, — Italian soldiers 
with helmets of gray canvas ; lastly, the quaint in- 
dustries sheltered under immense umbrellas ; chance 
singers, who fling upon the echoes of the lagoon an 
air of Verdi or Gordigiani; all this is what one 
never wearies of at Venice. 

And what constant new surprises in the streets, 
and on the open places great and small ! Here you 
go up some steps to cross a canal, there the way is 
barred, and a little staircase descends right into the 
water ; old women, worthy copies of the old women 
with the basket of eggs in Titian's ^^ Presentation 
of the Virgin,'' brush along the wall, their heads 
covered up in their shawls ; tall, well-made girls, 
with carefully-dressed hair, glass beads round their 



CONCLUSION. 435 

throats, and sandals on their feet, trail their dresses 
on the flagstones. 

The Venetians idle about, the street-boys pursue 
you, a woman offers you a lottery ticket, a long- 
bearded Armenian priest passes, letting his cas- 
sock float bellying like a sail in the wind, and 
you come out on a quay or under a trellis 
where gondoliers sleep on benches waiting for 
customers. 

Nature, the warm air, the limpid and transparent 
atmosphere in which Venice is bathed, — ^it is the 
emotion of this which after all remains the strongest 
among your impressions. After a visit to that pro- 
digious Ducal Palace, where masterpieces are 
heaped upon masterpieces, you long to breathe the 
clear air and hurry away to the gardens. You pass 
along the whole length of the Eiva dei Schiavoni, 
you get among the shipping, and the farther you go 
the better you can see the long front of Venice com- 
posing itself into a single view. You turn from 
time to time to enjoy the panorama, for it is the 
most admirable scene ever dreamed of by a Des- 
plechin, a Thierry, a Cambon, a Chapron, a Nolau, 
or a Rubbe, and when you lean on the terrace you 
soon forget the great works of art on which you 
have but now been gazing, in presence of this 
mighty work of the Master of masters ! The man 
of letters and the critic in you give way to the 
painter, and you are held enchanted by the spell of 



436 VENICE. 

these wonderful harmonies. The grounds of the 
garden are a light gray, the grass is green^ the trees 
in the foreground, still bare of leaves, cut out against 
the sky the delicate tracery of their boughs, the 
water is pearly with diamond spangles and shifting 
facets of light as bright as stars ; the tongues of 
sand and dry places of the lagoon come cutting here 
and there with bars of brown that silver mirror ; 
San Giorgio Maggiore, red and white, catches a 
luminous reflection ; the Grand Canal and its palaces 
close the horizon. All is solitary in the gardens, 
the green lizards glide quiveringly from sight, a 
gondolier cries alia harca ! a pretty little girl passes 
with bare head, her hair deftly dressed and draped 
in her shawl ; stretched on the scanty grass all 
round, the gondoliers sleep in the sunshine. All 
this would no doubt not satisfy the desires and aspira- 
tions of practical minds and natures hungry for life 
and change, for sensations ever new and spectacles 
ever varied. But for us it is a world sufficient, and 
we are not alone in feeling it to be so. ^' You dwell 
there in delight," says Paul de St. Victor, ^^and you 
look back to the days of your sojourn with emotion. 
Venice casts about you a charm as tender as the 
charm of woman. The rosy atmosphere in which 
she lies steeped, the shimmer of her lagoons, the 
jewelled hues that change with the changing hour 
upon her domes, her fascinating vistas, the master- 
pieces of her radiant painting^ the gentle temper of 



CONCLUSION. 437 

her men and women^ the sweet and pensive glad- 
ness that you breathe with her very air- — all these 
are so many divers but interlinked enchantments. 
Other cities have admirers^ Venice alone has 



INDEX. 



Academy of the Fine Arts, 221, 
237, 239, 242, 249, 264, 275, 386, 
393. 
Acton, Vice-admiral, 146, 405. 

Adda, Marquis Girolamo d', 356. 

Admiral of the Arsenal, his du- 
ties, 102; costume of, 369. 

Alberghetti, brothers, founders, 
104, 189, 224, 229. 

Alberegno, 236. 

Alberti, authority on architec- 
ture, 151 ; Camillo, 232 ; Duccio 
degr, 172. 

Albrizzi Palace, 208. 

Aldus, Manutius, early Venetian 
printer, 298 seq. 

Alemannus, 237. 

Alengon, 364. 

Alexander III., 121. 

Alexandrii, Tommasino, 340. 

Alexis Comnenus, 77, 80. 

Algardi, 185. 

Altichieri, 236. 

Altium, spoils from, at St. Mark's, 
127, 137. 

Ambassadors of the Eepublic, 21. 

Ambassadors, Eelazioni of, 69. 

Andrea, Alessandro, 222, 236 ; da 
Murano, 238; Zoan, 320. 

Andreani, Andrea, 255. 

Andreini, Isabella, of Padua, 305. 

Angelico (see Fra Angelico). 

Anne of Austria, 309. 

Antonio, 238. 

Aquileia, spoils from, at St. 
Mark's, 137. 

Architecture, its successive trans- 
formations, 126-149; the Ee- 
naissance, 150-164 ; Baroque 
style of, 161 seq. 

Archives of the Eepublic, 55-69. 

Aretino, Pietro, 207, 215, 249, 
274, 278, 301 seq., 319. 



Argentan, 364. 

Ariosto, Ludovico, 240, 246, 248, 

319. 
Armani, Vicenza, 305. 
Armenians, and their colony, 

426 seq. 
Arnoldo, 173. 
Arsenal of Venice, 95-106, 146, 

380, 407, 423. 
Artillery, 97, 100, 104. 
Asolo, 212, 426. 
Aspetto, Titiano, 222. 
Ateneo Veneto of San Fautino, 

213. 
Auberville, Dupont, 360. 
Augusti, Mario, 274. 
Augustus III., 288. 
Aurora Cafe, 394. 
Avaux, Count d', 363. 



Badile, 270. 

Baffo, 303. 

Baglioni, Grazio, 181. 

Balbi, Andrea, 62; Palace, 214, 

385. 
Baldu, Albisio, 167. 
Balestia, Antonio, 280. 
Ballerini, 341. 
Bandinelli, Baccio, 372. 
Baratta, Pietro, 184. 
Barattieri, 387. 
Barbarelli (see Giorgione). 
Barbaria, Giorgio, 347. 
Barbarigo, 246, 385. 
Barbaro, brothers, 425 ; Daniele, 

authority on architecture, 151 ; 

Marcantonio, 425; Villa of 

Marcantonio, 47, 121. 
Barettieri, Nicolo, engineer, 140, 

165. 
Baroccio, Jacopo, 167, 281. 
Baroque period of architecture^ 

161 ; period of sculpture, 181. 

439 



440 



INDEX. 



Bartalozzi, 374. 

Barthel, Marchio, 184. 

Bartolomeo, Giovanni, 238. 

Basaiti, Marco, 141. 

Baschet, Armand, 55, 262. 

Baseggio, Pietro, Director of Pub- 
lic Works, 144. 

Basil, 325. 

Basilica, 373, 388, 391. 

Bassanio, Martinelli di, 236. 

Bassano, 246, 276 ; Leaudro, 277. 

Battagia, 382. 

Battines, Colomb de, 322. 

Battista, Giovanni, 179. 

Baudouin, 289. 

Bayeu, 285. 

Beads, as an article of commerce, 
343, 348 seq. 

Bedford, 364. 

Bellini, Jacopo, 239 ; Gentile, 239, 
241; Giovanni, 239 seq., 248, 
318, 333, 340, 415. 

Bellotto, Bernardo, 288. 

Belluno, 246. 

Belvedere Museum, Vienna, 250, 
259 

Bembo, Cardinal, 240, 294; 
Pietro, poet, 300. 

Benoni, Giuseppe, architect, 160. 

Beolco, Angelo, comedian, 304. 

Bergamesco, Guglielmo, archi- 
tect, 156, 221, 383. 

Bernardino, architect, 160, 237. 
238. 

Bernardo Palace, 148, 385; Ma- 
rino, 231. 

Berni, Pietro, 180 ; poet, 300. 

Bernini, 184, 185. 

Beroviero, Angelo, 340 seq. ; 
Marietta, 341; Marino, 343. 

Berri, Duchess of, 190. 

Bertelli, Pietro, 367, 369. 

Bertrand, 40, 45. 

Bertuccio, Israel, 37, 144. 

Bessarion, Cardinal, 298, 312. 

Blanc, Charles, 256. 

Boldrini, Nicolo, 255. 

Boldii, Giovanni, 232. 

Bologna, 280, 286. 

Bonaventuri, Pietro di Zenobia, 
371. 

Bonifazio, 291. 

Bonincontro, de Boaterii, 175. 

Bordone, Paris, 254. 

Borgia, Lucretia, 372, 433. 



Boschini, Marco, 303. 

Boucher, Francois, 280. 

Bourlie, de la, 362 

Bragadini, monument to, 162. 

Bragadino, Bartolomeo, 179. 

Bramante, 204. 

Brengo, Lorenzo, 178. 

Brescia, 222, 285. 

Briati, Giuseppe, 346. 

Bridge of Sighs, 403, 404. 

Brondolo, 424. 

Bronze knockers, 232. 

Bronzino, 371. 

Brown, Eawdon, 290. 

Bruges, 364. 

Brugnolo, Pasqualigo, 179. 

Brule, Alberto de, 184. 

Brusasorci, 291. 

Brussels, 364. 

Brustolon, Andrea, 184. 

Bucentaur, the State galley, 115, 
385, 422. 

Buckingham, 364. 

Buckingham, Duke of, 346. 

Buonarroti (Michelangelo), 167, 
204, 224. 

Buono, Bartolomeo, architect, 
156, 200. 

Burano, 423. 

Buratti, Pietro, 303. 

Burchiella, 303. 

Byron, 420, 421. 

Byzantine Greeks, early treaties 
with, 76-78; period of sculp- 
ture, 171. 



Ca da Mosto, Alvisio, 296. 

Cadore, 246. 

Cadorin, Abbe Giuseppe, 255. 

Calcar, Giovanni de, 254 ; Jean 
de, 255. 

Calcina, 408. 

Calendar io, Filippo, architect, 
38 seq., 142-146, 148. 

Caliari, Carletto, 209, 269. 

Calmo, Andrea, 303, 305. 

Camelio, Vittor, engraver of med- 
als, 123. 

Camelio, Vittore, 231. 

Camerlenghi del Comune, palace 
of, 156, 166, 383. 

Campagna, Girolamo, 183, 213. 

Campagnola, 254. 



INDEX. 



441 



Campanile, 273, 388, 392. 
Campanile of San Giorgio, 406. 
Campo San Polo, 407. 
Canale, Antonio, 281, 286 ; Giro- 

lamo, 179, 380. 
Canaletto, Antonio, 284, 286 seq. 
Cane, Mastino, 172. 
Cannon, early use of, 105. 
Canova, 185, 395, 416, 
Capello, Bianca, 371; Bartolo- 

meo, 371. 
Cararia, Alessandro, 303. 
Carmagnola, 405. 
Carnero, Matteo, 184. 
Carnival, 397. 
Carpaccio, 165, 166, 242 seq., 333, 

357. 
Carracci, 272. 
Carri, Salon, 253. 
Carriera, Eosa-Alba, 281 seq. 
Casa al Campo dei Mori, 141 ; 

d'Oro, 148, 382; Falier, 141; 

Laguna, 406; Soranza, 245. 
Casanova of Senigalt, 403, 405. 
Casiche, Simon de, 238. 
Castiglione, Count of, 249. 
Cavalli Palace, 148, 386; Fran- 
cesco, 309 ; Jacopo, 172. 
Cellini, Benvenuto, 224. 
Chambord, Comte de, 386. 
Chardin, 289. 
Charles III., 285. 
Charles V., 249, 254, 259, 266, 301. 
Charles VI., 283. 
Chateau de Gaillon, a work of 

Giocondo, 155 
Chelsea Hospital, painting by 

Eicci at, 280. 
Cherra, Francesco, 305. 
Chioggia, 399, 417, 424. 
Chioggiotti, 399. 
Cicogna, Pascal, Doge, 368, 384. 
Cicognara, learned art critic, 147, 

201, 231. 
Clement VII., 249. 
Cochin, Nicolas, 309. 
Coignet, M. Leon, 273, 274. 
Colbert, 346, 361, 363. 
Colleoni, Bartholomeo, 226 seq. ; 

monument of, 177, 181, 193, 

225. 
Colonna, Francesco, authority on 

architecture, 151, 154 ; Jacopo, 

architect, 156. 
Colonne, Michel delli, 383. 



Columbus, 296. 

Conegliono, Cina da, 242 ; Alois, 

374. 
Contarini, Andrea, Doge, 32 ; 

Domenico, Doge, 357; Jacopo, 

263 ; painter, 209, 211 ; Palace, 

159, 386; Pier, 231; Sgrigni, 

386; Tomb of, 220. 
Conti, Nicolo, 229 
Cooper, 403. 
Cornaro, Catharine, 249; Fla- 

minio, architect, 134; Marco, 

Doge, 173; Pietro, 173. 
Corneille, bOl. 
Corner, della Ca Grande, 386; 

Palace, 153. 
Corner-Spinelli Palace, 190, 385. 
Corner, a monk, collector, 221; 

Regina, 383. 
Cornero, Queen, 383. 
Corradini Antonio, 184. 
Correr Museum, 221, 232, 244, 

289, 357, 382. 
Cosimo, Piero di, 372. 
Costume, laws to regulate, 354, 

366-375. 
Council of Ten, 42. 
Cozzi Palace, 148. 
Credi, Lorenzo di, 228. 
Crisostomo, San Giovanni, 197. 
Crivelli, Carlo, 239, 241. 
Crozat, 282. 

Custom House, 377, 386, 387, 410. 
Cyprus, loss of, 294. 



Dandolo, Andrea, Doge, 172; 
Count, keeper of archives, 
67; Henrico, Doge, 80; Vinci- 
guerra, 179. 

Daniele Palace, 148 

Dante, editions of, 322; Sar- 
cophagus of, 186. 

Da Ponte, 384. 

Daria, House of, at Genoa, 259. 

Dario Palace, 386. 

David, 185. 

Delacroix, Eugene, 401. 

Del Fiore, 237. 

Delfin, Doge, 184. 

Denmark, King of, 282. 

Dianiantino, 281. 

Didot, catalogue, 255. 

Didron, Edouard, 332. 



442 



INDEX. 



Diedo, critic, 201. I 

Diplomatic Service of the Ee- j 
public, 21. 

Dogaiia, the Custom House, 160; 
pinnacle of, 159. 

Dogaressa, costume of,^ 353, 367. 

Doge, nature of office, his duties, 
107-122 ; dress of, 368 ; attri- 
butes of, 120 ; prints depicting, 
112 seq. ; procession of,.113seq. 

Dolce, Ludovico, poet, 300, 305, 

Dolfin, Giovanni, 173; Palazzo, 
284. 

Domenichino, poet, 300^ 

Domenico, 232. 

Domenico, Giovanni^ 285. 

Dominicans, foster leaj:mng and 
architecture, 154. 

Don Juan of Austria,, 369; Lo- 
renzo, Doge^ 415i 

Dona, Pietro. 202. 

Donatello, 182. 

Doria, 385. 

Dresden, 288. 

Ducal Palace, 142, 157, 190, 268, 
379, 385, 387, 391, 405; figures 
of Justice and Yenice in,, 212 ; 
Giants' staircase, 209, 216, 4ai ; 
hall of Four Doors, 208; hall 
of the Great Council, 249, 263, 
269, 271,. 277 ^ Scala del Qro, 
209. 

Duomo,. 424. 

Dupin, senator, 352:. 

Diirer, Albert, 237. 

Duro, Dorso, 409, 

Elgin, Lord, 19& 
Escurial, 248. 
Esegrino, 236. 
Este, Cardinal d^ 279. 
Euhler, Jost, 374. 
Eustochio, Laura, 249. 

P 

Fabbriche, Nuove, 166, 397. 
Faliero, Marino, Doge, 33^44, 143, 

401 ; Ordelaffo, Doge, 33, 147 ; 

Vitale, Doge, 33, 78. 
Farnese, (Cardinal, 249. 
Farnesia, 234. 
Farsetti, 385. 
Fatti (see Sansovino). 



Fedele, Cassandra, 311. 
Federico, 316. 

Fenice theatre, 161, 398, 411. 
Ferdinand I., 162 ; Archduke, 274. 
Ferrara, Duke of, 165, 259, 317, 

353. 
Ferrara, 248. 
Ferrarese, Zelasio, 236. 
Ferrari, Benedetto, 308. 
Fiorelli, actor, 306. 
Firmin-Didot, Ambroise,299, 366. 
Fish-market, 384. 
Fleury, Eobert, 273, 401. 
Florence, 280. 
Florian's cafe, 394, 400. 
Fondachi, establishment of, 82 

seq. 
Fondaco, del Mori, 83; dei Te- 

deschi, 89, 166, 192, 245, 383 ; 

dei Turchi (Correr Museum), 

83, 87-89, 382. 
Fortebraccio, 320. 
Fosca, Giovanni Maria, 232. 
Foscari Palace, 148, 335. 
Foscarini, Marco, Doge, 134, 136, 

212 ; Michele, 294. 
Fra Angelico, 243 ; Giacomo, his- 
torian, 147, 355, 367, 370, 373. 
Frances I., 249, 301. 
Franco, Nicola, 300. 
Frangipani, Cornelio, 307. 
Frari, church of the, example of 

Eenaissanee architecture, 154; 

church of, 171, 174, 178, 180, 

252, 380, 403, 416; monastery 

of, 55. 
Frederick III., 311. 
French influence, 162. 
Fresco painting, introduced by 

Giorgione, 242. 
Friuli, 402 ; Nicolo de, 238. 
Fust, Jean, 314. 

G 

Galileo, 433. 

Galleys of the Venetian fleet, 96 ; 

building of, 99 seq. 
Gallo, Andrea and Domenico del, 

345. 
Gardane, Antoine, 321. 
Garden Point, 387, 405. 
Gamier, M., 349. 
Garzoni, Pietro, senator, 294. 
Gattamelata, 181. 



INDEX. 



443 



Gautier, Theophile, 397. 
Genoese, contests with, 28-31. 
German influence on architec- 
ture, 162. 
Gerspach, M., 350, 
Gesu, Church of, 161, 284, 
Giacomelli, vSignor, 425. 
Giants' Staircase, Ducal Palace, 

157, 404. 
Giocondo, Fra, architect, 90, 154 

seq., 166, 221. 
Giolito, 319. 
Giorgione (Barbarelli), 239, 244 

seq., 257, 383; frescoes bj, 89, 

192, 
Giotto, 236, 

Giovanni de Sancti, 175, 
Giovanni, master glass worker, 

339. 
Giralomo, Tedescho, architect, 

90. 
Giudecca, 387, 393, 410, 411, 417, 
Giustiniani palace, 148, 385, 386 ; 

monuments, 162; Marco, 173; 

Matteo, 179, 
Glass manufacture in Venice, 

324 seq, 
Goldoni, 303, 306, 310, 356, 407, 

420. 
Golzius, 355, 370. 
Gothic element in architecture, 

140, 148, 149, 175; element in 

sculpture, 172. 
Gozzi, Count Carlo, 310, 397, 420. 
Gradenigo, Doge, 146, 415; pal- 
ace, 201. 
Grand Canal, 368, 377, 379, 381- 

390, 393. 436. 
Grassi, 386. 
Grecche, delle, 255. 
Greci, 244. 
Greek influence in architecture 

and ornament, 152; influence, 

in literature, 298. 
Gregoriis, de, 318. 
Grimani, Marino, Doge, reopens 

crypt of St. Mark's, 133, 277, 

308; palace, 158, 217, 385; tomb 

of Antonio, 220. 
Gritti, Andrea, Doge, 167. 
Gritti, 303. 
Grotto, Luigi, 305. 
Guardi, 233, 280, 286, 288 seq., 

374, 380, 398, 399, 433. 
Guarino, 19. 



Guasco, 355. 

Guasto, Marchese del, 266. 
Guggenheim, M., 214, 368. 
Guino, Scarpa, architect, 167. 
Gutenberg, 312. 

H 

Halevy, 309, 

Hellenic influence in Venetian 

literature, 298, 
Henry IIL, 209, 216, 306, 307, 

353, 422. 
Honiton, 364, 
Hortensio^ poet, 300, 
Hotel d'Angleterre, 406. 
Hugo, Victor, 403, 410. 
Hurmuz. Monsignor George, 432. 



Imo Palace, 386, 
India, commerce with, 81. 
Ingres, M., 275. 
Isoletto, 407. 



Jenson, Nicolas, 313 seq., 317. 
Jews, position of, in Venice, 84; 

regulations concerning, 85, 
John of Cologne, 316, 
John of Spires, 313 seq- 
Jubinale, Aehille, 365. 
Junte, Antonio, 318 ; Lucantonio, 

319, 



Labbia, 303. 

Labbia Palace, 284, 382. 

Lace, 351, 358-365. 

Lancret, 289. 

Lando, poet, 300. 

Lanterns used on gondolas, 412. 

Lazzarini, 284. 

Lazzari, Vicenzo, 324, 328, 340. 

Leads, the, 403. 

Lena, Giacomo della, 289, 

Leo X., 73, 317. 

Leopai-di, 179, 183, 391; Ales- 

sandro, architect, 156, 176, 223- 

232. 
Lepanto, victory of, 92, 213, 369. 
Lcviiapide, 316. 
Liardo, M., 406. 



444 



INDEX. 



Libreria Vecchia, 116, 158, 159, 
207, 215, 312, 387, 391. 

Licinio, G. A. Rigello, 258. 

Lido, the, 379, 380, 393, 406, 420- 
422 426. 

Lion of St. Mark's, 140. 

Lioni, Nicolo, 40. 

Lion's Gate of the Arsenal, 101. 

Lionardo, 204. 

Lisa, Gerard da 316. 

Literature, Venetian, 292 seq.; 
history, 294; travels, 295; 
comedy, 304 ; poetry, 299 seq. ; 
drama, 301 seq. 

Literary movement, 291 seq. 

Loggetta, 388. 

Lombard element in architec- 
ture, 139, 153-154. 

Lombardi Family, 156, 179, 183, 
186-203, 221, 415. 

Lombardo, Antonio, architect, 
156, 196-199; Martino, archi- 
tect, 156, 192-195 ; Moro, archi- 
tect, 156, 199-203; Pietro, ar- 
chitect, 156, 183-192; Sante, 
architect, 156, 199-203 ; Tullio, 
architect, 156, 196-199. 

London, 280, 287. 

Longhena, Bartolommeo, ar- 
chitect, 159, 180, 184, 383. 

Longhi, Alessandro, 284, 290 seq. ; 
Pietro, 281, 284, 289 seq., 355. 

Loredano, Leonardo, Dos:e, 118, 
183, 191, 246; Paolo, 172; the, 
385. 

Lorenzo, 238. 

Loschi, A., 304. 

Louis le Debonnaire, 325; XL, 
313 ; XIV., 266, 342, 361, 374 ; 
XV., 283, 374. 

Louvre, 244, 246, 248, 250, 256, 
266, 282, 287, 289. 

Lucca, 259. 

M 

Macaruzzi, architects, 160. 

Macrone, Eocco, 242. 

Madonna delle Grazie, choir of, 

196 ; of the Lagoon, 406 ; del'- 

Orto, 259. 
Madrid, 248, 280, 284, 285. 
Maella, 285. 

Magagnati, Girolamo, 345. 
Maganza, 291. 



Magdalene, church of, 161. 

Maggiotto, Domenico, 286. 

Mahomet II., 241. 

Malamocco, 424. 

Malines, 364. 

Malipieri, 162, 179. 

Malpaga, castle of, 227. 

Malte-Brun, 296. 

Manchester, exhibits of lace at, 

360. 
Manelli, Francesco. 308. 
Manin, Daniel, 46-54, 385; villa, 

425. 
Mantegna, 237, 319. 
Mantua, Duke of, 249, 272. 
Manutius Aldus, 298. 
Marcantonio, 319. 
Marcello, Jacopo, 179. 
Marchioni, Giovanni, 184. 
Marciani, 221, 304, 
Marcolini, Francesco, 319. 
Marinetti, 286. 
Mario, glassworker, 340. 
Marriage of the Sea, 115, 116, 122. 
Martino, 193, 195. 
Masen, villa, 267, 425. 
Mathias Corvinus, 317 
Matilde, Princess, 394. 
Mazarin, Cardinal, 309. 
Mazza, Camello, 184. 
Medal engraving, 123-125. 
Medici, Cardinal de', 249 ; Grand 

Duke Francesco de', 371; Lo- 
renzo de', 372. 
Meduna, engineer on St. Mark's, 

136. 
Mekhitar, 426. 

Mekhitarist community, 428 seq. 
Mengs, 285. 
Merceria, 373, 388. 
Messina, Antonio of, 238, 240. 
Mestre, quarter of the Jews, 85. 
Michelangelo (see Buonarroti). 
Michele, Vitale, Doge, 339. 
Micheli, Angelo, 144; Giovanni, 

79. 
Michieli, Doge, 415. 
Milan, 280, 340; duke of, 226. 
Milesi, engineer on St. Mark's, 

136. 
Miotti, 347. 

Miretto, Giovanni, 236. 
Mirecourt, 364. 
Mocenigo, Alvisio, 312; Luigi, 

Doge, 118; Pietro, 172, 189; 



INDEX, 



445 



Tomasso, Doge, 92, 173, 197; 
Pala(;e, 385. 

Mocetto, Girolamo, engraver, 343, 

Modena, Thomas of, 236. 

Mole, the, 379. 

Moli, Clemente, 184. 

Molino, Antonio, 305. 

Molombra, Pietro, 211, 291. 

Molza, poet, 300. 

Monteverde, Claudio, 309. 

Mora, brothers, 350. 

Morelli, Ligno, 274 ; manufac- 
turers of mirrors, 346. 

Moreto, 241. 

Morny Collection, 289. 

Moreau, 289. 

Moro, Giulio del, 184 ; Lin Pal- 
ace, 385. 

Morosini, Andrea, Doge, sword 
of, 119, 294; Michele^ 172, 173; 
palace, 290. 

Mosaic workers, 235. 

Mosaics, 324 seq. ; recent use of, 
349. 

Motta, Liberale, 346. 

Municipal Museum, 290. 

Miintz, Eugene, 350. 

Murano, 188, 202, 235 seq., 258, 
324 seq., 423 ; beads from, 169 ; 
San Donato, Byzantine church 
on, 128. 

Musalo, Alberti, dramatist, 304. 

Music-printing, 321. 

Musset, Alfred de, 254. 

Mutinelli, Cavaliere, keeper of 
archives, 66. 

Muziano, Gerome, 278. 

N 

Naja, philosopher, 285. 

Naldo, da Briseghelli, Luigi, 179. 

Nani, Battista, 294. 

Nardi, Jacopo, 372. 

New Procuratie, the, 391. 

Nostra Donna del Miracoli, 

church of, 157. 
Novelli, 427. 



Old Procuratie, 391. 
Oliviero, Maffeo, 222. 
Opera, introduction of, at Ven- 
ice, 308. 
Orchardson, 410. 



Ordnance, 96, 105. 
Orfano canal, 426. 
Orseolo, Pietro, Doge, rebuilds 

St. Mark's, 129, 145, 325,327; 

develops commerce, 76. 
Orsini, Generosa, 179. 
Otlio, commercial concessions, 

76 ; Emperor, 249, 325. 
Ottavio, Duke, 249. 
Oxford, 364. 



Padua, 16, 182, 220, 248, 286; 

university of, 20. 
Pagani, Matteo, 320, 370. 
Paganini, 397. 
Pagan ino, 320. 
Painting, 233-291. 
Paladdio, 153, 158, 166, 204, 206, 

212, 371, 415, 420, 425. 
Pala d'Oro, 389. 
Palazzo Cozzi, 148; dei Mori, 

407. 
Palma (Giovane), 211 ; (Vecchio), 

258, 259 seq. 
Pantaloon, 398 seq, 
Parasole, 365. 

Parenco in Istria, mosaics at, 333. 
Paris, 248. 

Partecipazio, Doge, 129-131, 325. 
Paruta, Paolo, 183, 294. 
Pater, 289. 
Patricians, their responsibilities, 

21-24, 27. 
Paul of Heraclea, Doge, 16. 
Paul II., 249. 
Paulus de Venitiis (Magister 

Paulus), 238. 
Pecino, 238. 
Pelligrini, 280, 282. 
Peranda, Santo, 291. 
Pergola, Paolo Godi de, 340. 
Pesara, Marchioness of, 249, 266. 
Pesaro, Palace, 382 ; property of, 

family, 87 ; Lorenzo, 178. 
Petrarch, 312, 322. 
Petruccio, Ottaviano, 320 seq. 
Philip II., 249, 274. 
Piacenza, 280. 

Piazza, 373, 395 seq., 415, 426. 
Piazzetta, 373, 386, 391, 410. 
Piazzetta, Giovanni Battista, 281, 

284, 285. 
Picciuino, 226, 320. 



446 



INDEX. 



Piccolomini, Alessandro, poet, 

300. 
Piero, Gabriele de, 316. 
Pietro de Nova, 238 ; Nicolo da, 

236. 
Pievano, Stefan o, 236. 
Pigeons of Venice, 396. 
Piombo, Sebastian del, 247, 254, 

276, 291. 
Piot, M., 283, 358. 
Pisanello, Vittor, engraver, 123. 
Pisani, Andrea, architect, 146; 

palace, 148, 385 ; Yittor, 28-32. 
Pius IV., 179. 
Polcastro, Countess, 397. 
Polo, Marco, 295. 
Polutone, Sicco, 304. 
Pomendello, J. M., engraver, 124. 
Pompe, 365. 
Ponte della Paglia, 405; Ca di 

Dio, 406; di Socca, 408; del 

Paradiso, 147; Palace of Doge 

da, 232; Antonio da, 167; Ja- 

copo da (see Bassano) ; Nicolo 

da, architect, 158. 
Pontormo, 372. 
Pordenone, 253, 258. 
Porta della Carta, 401. 
Porta Giuseppe, 279. 
Potozzo, Francesco, 286. 
Pozzo, Andrea, 279. 
Printing, 312 seq. 
Priuli, Antonio, Doge, 118, 184. 
Procession of the Doge, 113 seq. 
Procuratie, 373, 380, 388, 391, 394. 
Procuratori, 392. 
Provveditori all' Artiglieria, 100 ; 

al Ai^senale, 99; al Sale, 73; 

alle Pompe, 351, 353. 
Punta Lunga, 417. 

Q 

Quadri's Cafe, 394, 400. 
Quirico, 237. 
Quirino, 238. 



Rarausio, J. B., 297. 

Raphael, 204, 319, 335. 

Redentore, church of, 158, 379, 
387, 420; festival of the, 416. 

Renaissance, period of the, 150 
seq. ; development of learning, 
printing, and the arts, 151. 



Renner of Halbrunn, 316. 
Reveil, engraver, 275. 
Rezzonnico, palace, 284, 386. 
Rialto, the, 164-169, 183, 339, 383, 

384, 393. 
Ricci, Felice, 269 ; Sebastian, 279, 

280, 284. 
Ridolfo, Carlo, 273, 278. 
Riva Alto, 326 ; Carbone, 302 ; di 

Schiavoni, 214, 376, 387, 399, 

402, 405 seq., 433, 435 ; hotel on, 

148. 
Rizzio, Antonio, architect, 156, 

190. 
Robert, Leopold, 384, 423. 
Robusti, Jacopo (see Tintoretto). 
Rodario, 189. 

Roman influence in architecture, 
i 152-154, 157. 
\ Romanelli, 280. 
I Rome, 248, 280. 
Rosalba, 281. 
Rosso, Giovanni, 318. 
I Rost, Adam, 316. 
j Roxburghe, Duke of, his library, 

315. 
Royal Palace, 388. 
Rubens, 211. 

Rucellai, Girolamo, poet, 300. 
Ruzante (see Beolco), 303. 



S 



Saint- Andre, M., 362. 
Saint-Didier, 355, 356 seq. 
Saint-Georges, M., 309. 
St. Apollinaris, 187. 

Benedict, 281. 

George, 391 

Isidore, 173. 

Jerome, statue of, 215-216. 

Mark, his bones in crypt of 
St. Mark's, 132, 135. 

Mark's, 129, 174, 173, 176, 235, 
327, 333, 350, 388 ; Byzantine 
architecture of, 129 seq. ; col- 
umns of, 140 ; crypt of, 130- 
136 ; ornamentation of, 137- 
139. 187, 215, 225. 

Mark's Place, 391, 394, 398. 

Roch, church of, 61. 

Saba of Acre, spoils from, 139. 

Simon the Apostle, church of, 
161. 



INDEX. 



447 



St. Ursula, painting of, by Car- 

paccio, 242. 
Victor, Paul de, 436. 
San Andrea del Lido, 158, 421. 
Andrea della Oertosa, 188. 
Antonio of Padua, 198, 222. 
Cassiano Theatre, 305-308. 
Christophoro della Pace, 188. 

423. 
Donato, Murano, 128. 
Fantino, 179, 213. 
Francesco del Deserto, 424. 
Francesco del Vigna, church 

of, 158, 217, 277. 
Giacomo on the Rialto, 217, 
Giacomo dell' Orio, 409. 
Giorgio, 406. 
Giorgio Maggiore, church of, 

158, 175, 183, 217, 266, 387, 

415 seq., 436. 
Giovanni Crisostomo, 202. 
Giovanni e Paolo, piazza of, 

125 ; theatre of, 308 ; church 

of, 141, 171, 173, 176, 185, 189, 

197, 213, 226, 256, 266, 343, 

416. 
Lazzaro, 426 seq. 
Martin o, 196. 
Michele, 202, 423. 
Moise, 184, 259, 375. 
Nicolo, 421. 
Pietro Samaldi, 259. 
Rocco, Scuola di, 157, 
Salvatore, 184, 196, 380. 
Sepolcro, 214, 399. 
Stefano, 179, 191, 222, 259. 
Vitale, 281. 
Zaccaria, 174, 179, 188, 195,209, 

216, 220, 240, 415. 
Zeno, 231. 
Santa Croce, 167, 409. 
Elena, 371. 
Fosca, church of, on Torcello, 

127, 424. 
Helena of Monte Oliveto, 259. 
Maria delPArto, 175, 275, 380. 
Maria Formosa, 259, 260, 380. 
Maria GU)riosa de' Frari, 141, 

154, 215, 254. 
Maria dei Miracoli, 187. 
Maria Maggiore, 279, 377, 379. 
Maria in Organo, 281. 
Sabellico,MarcantonioCoccio,343. 
Sacco, Antonio, actor, 306, 
Sacrati, 309, 



Sagormino, 325. 

Sagredo, 383. 

Salviate, Porta del, 319. 

Salviate, 279, 370; Dr., 330. 

Salt trade, development of, 71 

Salute, church of, 159, 222, 377, 

383, 386. 
Sammicheli, architect, 158, 204, 

220, 385. 
Sansovino, Jacopo (Fatti), 157, 

163, 165, 166, 202, 204, 207, 214, 

232, 370, 387 ; Francesco, poet, 

300. 
Sanudo, Marco, 162, 179. 
Sanuto, Marino, diaries of, 295. 
Scala^ Flaminio, 305 seq. ; Antica, 

407. 
Scalzi, 284. 

Scalfarotto, architect, 161. 
Scamozzi, architect, 159, 167, 222, 

415. 
Scarpaccio : see Carpaccio). 
Scarpagnino, Antonio, architect, 

156, 200, 221. 
Schiavone, Andre, 279. 
Schoeffer, 314. 
Scotti, Ottaviano, 318. 
Sculpture, Venetian, 190 seq. 
Scuola della Miserecordia, 226; 

di San Girolamo, 213 ; di San 

Marco, 192, 271 ; di San Rocco, 

199, 271. 
Sebenico, 278. 
Segnin, J., 364. 
Selvatico, Pietro, Marquis, 195, 

201, 228, 231. 
Selvo, Domenico, enriches St. 

Mark's 129. 
Semitecoio, Nicolo, 236, 238. 
Senator, his duties, 24-26. 
Sepulchral monuments, 170 seq. 
Serinalta, 259. 

Serlio, author of work on archi- 
tecture, 153, 202. 
Servi, church of, 141. 
Servites, 266. 
Sforz^a, 320. 
Sforzas of Milan, 317. 
Ship-building in Venice, 103. 
Siounic, Archbishop of, 429. 
Soliman II., 249, 266. 
Soranzo, librarian, 366. 
Spavento, Giorgio, 166, 196. 
Sporandco, engraver, 124. 
Speroni, poet, 300, 



448 



INDEX. 



Spino, 226. 

Spirito Santo, 183. 

Squarcione, 237. 

Stagua, 193. 

Stefani, Chevalier, 402. 

Stella, 408. 

Steno, Michel, 34, 144, 179. 

Strada, Jacopo, 273. 

Strawberry Hill, 371. 

Stucco, use of, 206. 

Suriano, 179. 

Suttil's Cafe, 394. 



Tagliapietra, Alvisio, 184, 185, 
423. 

Tagliente, 320. 

Taglioni, Madame, owner of Casa 
Doro, 148. 

Tasso, 250 

Teatino, church of, 259. 

Temanza, Tommaso, architect, 
161, 186, 188, 195, 201, 225, 228, 
231. 

Teofano, 235. 

Theatres, introduction of, 305. 

Tiepolo, Bajamonte, 165, 280, 281, 
382; Giambattista, 284; Lo- 
renzo, Doge, 138, 233, 339; pal- 
ace, 385. 

Tintoretto, 157, 210, 254, 256 seq., 
266, 270 seq., 380; Domenico, 
275 ; Maria. 273. 

Tirali, architect, 160. 

Titian, 204, 209, 239, 245, 247 seq., 
265, 301, 319, 370, 383, 416, 434 ; 
Death of Peter the Martyr by, 
142; frescoes by, 91, 192; mon- 
ument to, 162 ; portrait of, 215. 

Tommaseo, poet, 49. 

Tommasini, Tommaso, Bishop of 
Feltre, 175. 

Toppan Palace, 148. 

Torcello, cathedral on, 126, 339, 
424. 

Torelli, Commeudatore, restores 
crypt of St. Mark's, 136; stage 
manager, 309. 

Torre tti, Giuseppe, 184, 185. 

Trapolini, 305. 

Tremignan, Alessandro. 184. 

Trevisani, Melchior, 179 ; palace, 
201. 

Treviso, 196, 426. 



Tron, 382. 
Tullio, 194, 197, 
Turchi, family of, 269. 
Turla, Cardinal, 297. 
Tuscany, Duke of, 282. 

U 

Urbino, 248, 317. 

Urcole II., Duke of Ferrara, 259. 



Valdarfer, Christopher, of Katis- 
bon, 315. 

Valdezoccio, 316. 

Valiero, Silvestro, 312. 

Van Eyck, 237, 242. 

Vanuletti, 397. 

Vartalud, Ananias, of San Laz- 
zaro, 431. 

Vasari, 224, 242, 256. 

Vasto, Marquis del, 249. 

Vatican, 234, 279. 

Vecchio, Pal ma, 254. 

Vecellio, Cesare, 355, 358 ; Fran- 
cesco, 254; Marco, 254, 255; 
Orazio, 355, 358. 

Vecellio, 364. 

Velano of Padua, 228 seq. 

Velasquez, 211. 

Veludo, librarian, 366. 

Venetian, civic duties of, 26-27; 
constitution, 22 ; patriotism, 
23 seq. 

Veneziano, Antonio, 238. 

Vendramin-Calergi Palace, 156, 
190, 198, 199, 382; Doge, 175, 
226, 335 ; tomb of, 177 ; palaces, 
382. 

Veneziano, Bartolomeo, 278 ; Lo- 
renzo, 236. 

Venice, characteristics of, 11 seq. ; 
commerce of, 13 seq. ; develop- 
ment of, 16 seq. ; founding of, 
13 seq. ; siege of, 53 ; studies 
in, 19. 

Veuier, Agnese, Dogaressa, 173; 
Antonio, Doge, 172 ; Maflfeo, 303. 

Veniero, Lorenzo, Doge, 415 ; Se- 
bastian o, admiral, 369. 

Verona, 280 ; Jacob of, 236. 

Veronese, Alessandro, 269; Car- 
letto, 269 ; Gabriele, 269 ; Paolo 
Caliari, 210, 212, 257, 260 seq., 
284, 425-433. 



INDEX. 



449 



Verrochio, Andrea, 177, 227 seq. 

Versailles, 267. 

Vesalius, Andreas, 256. 

Vescovi, Marco del, 273. 

Vicentino, 209. 

Vicenza, 206, 259. 

Victor Emmanuel, 385. 

Vidaore, Andrea, 344. 

Vienna, 280. 

Villa Barbaro (Manin) (Masere), 

212, 267, 425. 
Vinciola, 364. 

Vindelin, early printer, 315. 
"Vis Domini," 82. 
Vitalba, actor, 306. 
Vitruvius, 151, 204. 
Vittoria, Alessandro, 179, 195, 

204-223, 369, 415, 425. 
Vivarini, 234, 237, 241; Luigi, 

238. 
Viviani, Viviano, 220. 
Viviano, Antonio, 237. 
Volto Santo, church of, 141. 

29 



W 

Waddington, 366. 

Wallace, Sir Eichard, collection 

of Guardis, 289. 
Watteau, 268. 
Wells, The, 404. 

Wiirzburg, Prince Bishop of, 280. 
Wiirzburg, 284. 

Z 

Zanetti, Bishop of, 196. 

Zattere, 284, 408, 411, 417. 

Zecca, 231, 387. 

Zelotti, 264, 270. 

Zeno, Antonio, 296 ; Niccolo, 296 ; 

Cardinal, 188, 199. 
Ziani, Marco, 83; Sebastiano, 

Doge, 121, 415. 
Zoppino, 320. 
Zuccati, brothers, 335. 
Zuccato, Polonia, 305; Valerio, 

305. 



•-300-^ 



%* 




.^^-._ 






